Long Way Home
by dramatic owl
Summary: Post 'Mirror Image'. Every leap brings Sam closer to home. Part 5: Sam leaps to stop Al from leaping.
1. Lost

**Disclaimer:** None of it belongs to me. Just this story.

**Prompt:** alone

**Summary:** Post 'Mirror Image'. Sam meets Al again and learns that there is another wrong he needs to right for him.

**A/N:** Many, many thanks to cecilegrey for the beta.

* * *

**LOST**

_**Rio de Janeiro**__**  
**__**February 17, 2003**_

One thing that hadn't changed since Sam started leaping on his own and with his own face was the disorientation he felt every time upon first leaping in. At least now whenever he arrived it was in deserted or private spots where no one would see him, for people would be alarmed at the sight of a man appearing out of thin air. But there was always that lag time in which he had to figure out where he was, where he was supposed to go, who he was supposed to help, what wrong he was supposed to put right, all of which were not always easily and immediately apparent.

This time he was standing in the middle of a dense forest, flanked on all sides by lush foliage, tall trees and mountains. Considering the suffocating heat and humidity that immediately accosted him it very well might have been a jungle and he glanced about desperately, looking for signs of civilization. There was nothing and no one other than the sounds of birds and insects. The sun was up but the tree canopy blocked much of the sunlight and Sam couldn't tell what time of day it was. He definitely wouldn't have any luck with the date.

He took stock of his clothing next. Denim shorts, a grey tee-shirt with a design and writing on it, and sneakers that resembled sandals – rubber-soled but open, with Velcro straps that secured them to his feet. Casting his eyes toward the sky he wondered wryly how it was that he managed to begin each and every leap dressed differently. In the place and time he'd just left he'd been wearing a tuxedo, now he was in shorts and a tee. It wasn't as if he changed clothes before each leap, or at least he had no memory of doing so. Yet no matter where and when he appeared he was always wearing the right clothing and haircut for the place and time period, looking as if he belonged wherever he was. And he always had his wallet with him, in the same pocket.

Shaking his head he took in his surroundings again. He was standing on the forest trail halfway up a mountain and since he'd been facing up when he leaped in it was obvious he was meant to be ascending rather than descending.

_Figures. I gotta climb a damn mountain now too._

Tugging on his tee-shirt so he could better decipher the upside down, backwards writing he discovered that it had the Olympic logo on it and read _Sydney 2000_.

"Australia?" he exclaimed.

He'd only leaped outside of the United States maybe seven or eight times in his entire career as a Quantum Leaper, and they had all been leaps into other people. Then again maybe he wasn't in Australia and the shirt was simply appropriate attire that had the added bonus of clueing him in to the time period. Wherever he was he now knew it was the year two thousand or later.

With a sigh he began his climb upward, idly thinking that he must be somewhere tropical. It felt like Florida. Or Vietnam.

His breath hitched as the memory of another leap suddenly came unbidden, a leap in Vietnam. He remembered his joy at seeing Tom and knowing he had a chance to save his brother's life, his anguish at the bloodied face and body of Maggie Dawson as she lay cradled in his arms – her life given in place of Tom's, his pure shock and sorrow when he saw the Pulitzer Prize-winning last photo she had taken of a P.O.W. with an all too familiar face.

_Al._

Sam felt a pang of deep grief in his chest as the thought of his old friend crossed his mind once again.

It had only taken a handful of leaps since he'd left that strange bar in Cokeburg for Sam to appreciate and sorely miss the magnafluxing of his memory, or Swiss-cheese effect as Al had so poetically described it, that leaping used to cause. Being unable to remember much about his life had been deeply frustrating and discouraging but now he realized that in certain ways it had been a blessing in disguise. Intact memories and the emotions that accompanied them were a heavy burden that followed him into each new leap. Vivid recollections and stray daydreams of loved ones and events in his own past, memories of the friend he'd left behind. There were times when it was almost too much to bear.

He supposed it was part of the challenge of the difficult new assignment that damned mysterious bartender had alluded to, and perhaps the memories were necessary now. But it wasn't new anymore, and he was weary and alone. Isolated. He cared about everyone he met on the leaps, about what happened to them, but they weren't people that he loved and who loved him. Once he accomplished whatever he had to and leaped out they likely forgot he'd even been there. Like Stawpah, the leaper in the Cokeburg bar, who was an integral part of a crowd one minute and suddenly remembered by nobody the next.

There were too many moments to count when he would have given anything to have his best friend back on the journey with him.

The heat and humidity was oppressive and he was drenched in sweat and panting after only a short time climbing the hill. At least the path wasn't too difficult to maneuver, other than the fact that it was on a consistent incline. Take away the brutal climate and it was actually a pleasant hike through a peaceful forest. Sam threaded his way up the trail, stopping when the trees thinned and he was in a clearing. Here he rested, catching his breath, lifting the tee-shirt up from the bottom to wipe his face. From the sun's angle he could see that it was early morning and hot already. Above and off to his right the top of a large rock was visible and a new path led in that direction. There was another trail to his left and no sign of anyone on either.

While he stood there resting and pondering which way to go a distant cry reached his ears. It might have been that of a bird or a wild animal but Sam could have sworn it sounded human. He remained motionless, listening to the sounds around him and after a few minutes he heard it again. The cry of a human voice, filled with anguish. It seemed to be coming from the left and he chose that path, sure-footedly ascending above the tree line. He gasped involuntarily as he reached the large flat rock that topped the mountain and glimpsed the city sprawled out below. So he wasn't lost in some jungle in the middle of nowhere after all.

_Thank God._

It was a breathtaking view. He could see the ocean and an endless curving beach. The cloudless sky was bright blue, green-covered mountains loomed in the distance and immediately around the peak where he stood. In fact he might have been on a vacation except that he never was – not really.

Sam still had no idea where he was but he had discovered the likely reason for this leap. The man he found sitting up here was of small build, dressed completely in black including his baseball-style cap, and he was perched at one edge of the rock with his legs dangling over the precipice, his head bent, staring down into the abyss; and making Sam very, very nervous, for he could see nothing but a long dizzying drop beyond the man's knees. A small purple backpack that was faded with age and covered with patches lay on the rock beside his hand. It was flat, as if it had nothing or very little packed inside of it.

There was no doubt in Sam's mind that it was this man who uttered the cries that he heard, and that he'd leaped here for him. Was he contemplating suicide? Judging from the position of his head the man wasn't looking out at the lovely cityscape; he was looking down at the open endless drop beneath his dangling feet. Maybe he had no such intention and was merely taking in the bird's eye view immediately below. Sam might simply be here to stop him from accidentally falling. Usually it wasn't that easy though and more often than not these days the reason for each of his leaps unfolded slowly, over longer periods of time. Leaping on his own had required him to learn to be more patient, too.

Whatever his reason, the guy had chosen to seat himself in an extremely precarious location and position and Sam knew he had to somehow convince him to move to a safer spot.

The man had heard his approach, becoming still and lifting his head but not before Sam glimpsed the almost imperceptible trembling of his hunched shoulders. Sam took a step toward the man, considering how he might begin a conversation.

"It's a beautiful view," he said, keeping his eyes focused on the backpack and away from what was beyond the edge of the rock.

_But please. Please back away from the edge…_

Much to Sam's relief the man shifted back on the rock as if he'd heard his silent prayer and drew his legs up. Then he grabbed the backpack, stood up and turned toward him, and Sam's heart lurched as he found himself staring into the face of his old friend. He looked the same as he did when Sam last saw him outside the bar in Cokeburg except that he was thinner, if it was possible for the wiry man to be any smaller. Al wasn't crying but even in the shadow of the bill of the cap Sam could see the tracks that the tears he already shed had left.

"Al!" The name escaped Sam's lips before he could stop himself, before he realized that he'd seen no surprise, no sign of recognition at all in Al's dark eyes.

Al started then frowned and with guarded eyes he studied Sam, clearly trying to place if he knew him and from where.

"How do you know my name?" he demanded after a stunned silence. "Do we know each other from somewhere?"

_We should have met by this time but I changed history and we didn't. He never worked on the project and we never became friends. Somehow I still remember it all but for him it never happened. It never did happen. That timeline was erased._

The moment he'd made the choice to put right what went wrong for Al, to change Al's history so that Beth would wait for him and not remarry, Sam knew that it was a possibility. That maybe he would change the path of Al's life so drastically that they would never meet in the new timeline. He _knew_ it, and he didn't regret it; he'd done it for Al, so that he and Beth would have the life they were meant to have together, so that Al would have a chance to be happier. And yet, when actually faced with it now the stark reality of it hit him with the force of a violent blow.

"Sorry…you look like someone I knew…he was named Al, too," he barely managed to stammer.

A wave of panic suddenly surged through him. For the first time he was actually thinking through, _really_ thinking through the possible ramifications of them never meeting and his head began to swim.

_Tom._

"Hey, are you okay?"

He could hardly catch his breath. He felt more than saw Al take a step toward him.

"You don't look too good. Maybe you should sit down."

Sam nodded and as his legs began to turn to rubber beneath him he hastily took a seat on the rock. He drew his knees up toward his chest, dropped his elbows on them and rested his head in his hands. His mind was racing. If he'd changed things so they never met and Al was never his observer, never helped him on all the previous leaps had the outcome of those leaps changed? And if so, what about all the people he'd helped, like Jimmy LaMotta and his family, and Katie McBain, and so many others? What about Tom? It was Al who helped him save his brother's life during the leap into Vietnam, though that change in his own personal history came at such a heavy price. By changing Al's past had he reversed that? Or would another observer have done the same for him? The project still existed even without Al, he knew that. Though the memories weren't nearly as vivid he did have an awareness of an altered Project Quantum Leap in another timeline, with a different hybrid computer – called Alpha instead of Ziggy – and an observer named St. John, also a man of slight build but much more formal in his manner and demeanor, who did his job efficiently but lacked Al's warmth and passion; a colleague who cared about the project and was dedicated to helping him complete the leaps successfully, but not a dear friend who would do anything in the world for him.

But he'd already thought all of this through when he made the choice, hadn't he? Had he just forgotten? Maybe his brain was still more Swiss-cheesed than he realized. Or maybe he hadn't thought about it because he just didn't want to. It wouldn't be the first time in his life that he acted purely on impulse, without considering for a moment the possible consequences. Hadn't he rushed into the Quantum Leap accelerator despite Al's urging him to wait, despite Ziggy saying no, and recklessly hurled himself into the past before everything was ready?

He heard and felt Al take a seat on the ground in front of him, then zippers opening and closing. Sam concentrated on the sounds, his breath coming easier as he did so, the panic that had gripped his chest like a vise beginning to dissipate.

In his mind Sam prayed to God, resigning himself to the fact that he would have to have faith that everything was okay, Tom was fine and all the leaps from before had turned out right. That after all the leaping around in time he'd done, putting right what once went wrong, He wouldn't pull such a cruel hoax on him.

When his head had stopped spinning and the buzzing in his ears subsided he opened his eyes and raised his head. Al sat cross-legged on the rock before him, eyeing him intently with both concern and confusion. He thrust what looked like a juice box towards him and which Sam accepted gratefully.

"Thanks." He could feel Al's eyes scrutinizing him as he began to read the outside of the carton, which wasn't in English.

"Coconut water. That's better than plain water."

He nodded as he peeled the silver tab off the spout at the top and took a drink. It wasn't something he'd ever drank before but it wasn't bad and it was quenching.

"Keep sipping that. It'll rehydrate you. You shouldn't have hiked all the way up here with nothing to drink in climate like this."

Sam just nodded again and began taking several gulps of the coconut water.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he answered softly, lowering the carton and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I'm okay, Al."

Again the name was pronounced before Sam realized it and Al's eyes narrowed. "It seems you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name but I don't know yours."

"Sam…I'm Sam."

It occurred to Sam suddenly that maybe, just maybe the reason Al didn't know him was because this time, for the first time since he'd left Cokeburg, he'd leaped into someone else again, someone who was a stranger to Al. There was no place around here for him to view his reflection. Maybe…

"Sam Beckett," he added hopefully.

Al looked at him curiously. "Like the Irish playwright?"

"Yeah," he sighed after a moment, deflated. "Like the Irish playwright."

"I guess you get that a lot."

Sam grunted an affirmative and brought the carton to his lips again, gulping more of the drink to try to force away the lump that had formed in his throat.

"How the hell did you even get up here, Sam? The park isn't open yet."

"It isn't?"

"It doesn't open until eight o'clock."

"But…you're here."

"Yeah, well. I kinda got special permission to be here whenever I want."

"Oh."

"You snuck in?"

"Sort of."

"Huh. You must have a lot of stamina to make it up to Estrada da Canoa without a car."

"I was walking the trail and I heard…" Sam began awkwardly. He wanted to steer the conversation away from himself, back to Al and to the purpose of the leap. "I thought I heard…you sounded…I thought that maybe you needed assistance. Then when I saw you at the edge of the rock like that…"

Al's eyes widened. "You thought I wanted to jump?"

"No!" he replied defensively. That thought had crossed his mind only before he discovered the identity of the man. But he knew Al better than that, though he didn't know him in this timeline. Al Calavicci had lived through hell and come out fighting. He was a survivor not a suicide. "No. But you might've fallen…"

"Oh for God's sake."

"I didn't think…it's just that you had your head bent and you were looking all the way down…"

"Yeah, well, sometimes I like to spook myself."

Sam stared at him.

"Did someone send you up here to check on me? My daughter Sam maybe?"

"What?"

Al ranted for a full minute in Italian, looked up at the sky and made a gesture toward the heavens that Sam had no idea how to interpret.

He shook his head. "I don't know your daughter Sa…Sam. I just thought you needed…help up here." He paused and took a deep breath, then asked, "Are you okay?"

His old friend stared at him. Judging from the expression on his face he was trying to decide if Sam was for real and if so whether or not he was deranged. "Am _I_ okay? You know, maybe you ought to worry about yourself," he said at last. "You're the one that looked like you were about to pass out just now." He gestured to the carton once more. "Go on and keep drinking that. Heat exhaustion is no joke."

Without thinking Sam obediently raised it to his lips and took another gulp then set the carton down.

"You still don't look too good. Maybe you should…"

"I'm fine, Al," he assured him with a small smile. "I just got a little dizzy. It's a long way down…I don't like heights and…"

"You don't like heights but you climbed up to the top of Pedra Bonita?" Al asked, looking astonished.

_Pedra Bonita._

Sam tried to remember if he had ever heard of Pedra Bonita and where it was. He knew that in Spanish '_piedra_ bonita' meant 'beautiful rock' but that didn't shed any light on its location.

"That's really something. You don't like heights but you climbed all the way up here because you thought I needed help?"

He nodded.

Al was silent for a long time. Then he finally averted his penetrating gaze from Sam and grunted. "Well, you're a real rarity, that's for sure. You didn't need to worry though…Sam. I wasn't gonna fall. And if I wanted to off myself I would take the gun I own, point it at my head and pull the trigger. All in the privacy of my own home. Much simpler and a lot less work than climbing all the way to the top of a mountain to jump off of it. I just wanted to come up and spend some time alone before everyone else got here."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have intruded…"

"Eh," Al said huskily with a brisk wave of his hand. "It's okay. Forget about it. You were trying to help." He paused then muttered, almost too quietly for Sam to hear, "I'm better off with the company anyway."

Sam dipped his head and glanced toward Al surreptitiously, trying to study him without appearing as if he was staring at him. The tear stains that he saw on his face before were gone but Al looked haggard. And there was a gravity to him now that Sam had never seen before, a heaviness that seemed to cling to him like another skin and weigh him down. He was certainly…subdued. Even his dress was downright somber, a far cry from the outrageous bright-colored outfits that he had always worn; and that Sam often ribbed him about. The patched-up faded purple backpack he was carrying with him for some unknown reason was the only hint of color and it seemed completely at odds with him. He guessed that Al must have borrowed it from somebody else.

What had happened to him? Whatever it was it was bad enough to draw him here.

His cigar was conspicuously absent too. The Al he had known smoked like a chimney. Not only hadn't Al once taken out a cigar just to fidget with during the time they'd been sitting here, yet alone smoked one, he didn't smell like cigar smoke even. Maybe Beth convinced him to quit a long time ago. Maybe having a child had changed his mind about smoking too.

A daughter! Al had a daughter! There was a timeline, another reality, when Al had no family and Sam would invite him to come with him to his sister Katie's home in Hawaii for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. As grateful as Al was to be invited and made to feel that he was family too Sam knew those visits had also been painful for his friend, for they reminded him of what he didn't have and of everything he'd lost. He was happy that Al had a family of his own now. Once he leaped into a mother of three in the nineteen-eighties. The youngest child, a little girl named Teresa Bruckner could see him for who he was and could see his holographic observer too. Sam could hardly believe how terrific and natural Al was with her, and with other little children in later leaps who could see them both. Maybe it was because in so many ways he was like a big kid himself. There was no doubt in his mind that fatherhood suited Al.

"The resemblance is that close?"

"Huh?" Sam's head jerked up and he looked at Al in confusion.

"When you first saw me you thought I was someone else. The resemblance is that close?"

Al's intense gaze was unsettling. He looked down at his hands so the other man wouldn't see his expression and nodded. "Uncanny."

"Close friend?"

"Closer than a brother," Sam replied quietly.

"Weird that he's got the same name as me too."

"Yeah, weird," he said, his stomach beginning to knot.

He shook his head slightly and laughed bitterly under his breath at the irony of it all. Through five years of leaping with Al as his holographic observer his Swiss-cheesed brain hadn't allowed him to remember anything – or more than very little – about their friendship prior to his leaping. He knew whatever Al was able to reveal and remind him about. Now he could recall everything about the man who for many years had been his best friend, brother, father, mentor, colleague, collaborator and eventually his guide and lifeline all rolled into one; but Al had never met him and none of that had actually happened. No wonder he'd never leaped home. The home he knew no longer existed. And he'd already known that, too.

Sam was already feeling low since the very start of the leap but this train of thought made his mood plummet.

"If you don't mind me saying you look like you're a little down on your luck," Al commented suddenly, his gravelly voice laced with compassion.

With great effort Sam shook off his reverie and blinked away the tears that were beginning to prick the corners of his eyes. He had to stop feeling sorry for himself. There was nothing he could do about the way things were now and he had to focus on figuring out what he was supposed to put right this time. This was a leap, and like any other leap he had a job to do. He was here for Al.

"I guess maybe we both are," he hinted softly, raising his eyes to meet Al's again.

Al frowned at him. "Maybe," he muttered finally and turned away.

Sam followed the direction of his gaze and saw that he was staring up at a monolithic rock that topped another mountain across the chasm from where they sat. It suddenly occurred to him that he had seen Al's eyes constantly returning to that spot the entire time he'd been with him and now he understood why. The rock looked like it had a face carved into its vertical side.

His lips curved into a slight smile. "It looks like a face."

"Yeah. That's Pedra da Gávea." There was something in Al's voice when he pronounced it, a meaning that the name seemed to hold for him that Sam couldn't fathom.

"Is it well-known?"

He nodded. "You've never been to Tijuca before?"

"Tijuca?"

Al turned and gave him an odd look. "The park we're in now."

"No, never."

"Or heard of it, apparently."

"What's significant about that rock?"

"The view and the face on the side of it. Seems there's debate as to whether that face was naturally carved by the elements or by pre-historic people."

With that in mind Sam studied the face carefully. "My guess is the elements. Is there archaeological evidence otherwise?"

Al shrugged. "Not that I've heard of, but I wouldn't necessarily hear about it even if there was. I think it's just one of those stories that somebody started. Anyhow Pedra Bonita is the easier trail. That's why it gets busy early. Plus it's the take-off point for hang-gliders. If I do go flying off this mountain it will be on a hang-glider."

"A hang-glider?" Sam repeated, astonished. He turned and looked at him closely. Al had to be close to seventy years old at this point. "You hang-glide?"

"I never have but maybe I'll try it. I was a pilot and I handled more difficult flying machines than a hang-glider. And I've parachuted out of a plane a few times. It should be a cake-walk. There's a ramp where you take off and then you fly over and down onto São Conrado Beach, right over there," he explained, pointing. He paused then added thoughtfully, "It's a great view of Rio. Too bad you hate heights or you could try it while you're here."

_Rio!_

"I can live with missing it," Sam remarked dryly.

Al just shrugged again.

"Have you ever hiked up to Pedra…Pedra da Gávea? Is that where the other path…?"

Sam trailed off, taken aback as before his eyes a look of utter profound grief had suddenly and inexplicably darkened Al's visage and the man seemed to physically shrink.

"That trail is difficult and can be dangerous," he finally replied. "I never tried it."

"Oh." Sam was so stunned and dismayed by the sudden and extreme change for the worse in Al's demeanor he didn't know what else to say.

"If you're thinking of trying it, don't go alone." The soft low-pitched warning came out as a growl, as if it was an effort for him to speak. He cleared his throat then and spoke a little louder. "There's a part called _Carrasqueira_ that involves rock climbing…it's only one section but…people have fallen and died. You really need to have stamina. Be careful and go with a guide who knows the trail if you're going."

Al brought a hand up to his forehead and agitatedly raked a hand through his hair with two fingers; it was a habit of his that he knew well.

"I don't know if I will go. But I'll take that advice if I do."

For more than one reason he wanted to keep the conversation going, or more to the point keep Al talking to him.

"Have you been to Rio a lot?" he asked. "You seem to know this park very well."

"I do now," he replied, his voice flat.

"I've never been here," Sam continued, undaunted. "Or anywhere in South America actually."

"You here for Carnival?"

"Carnival?"

"Yeah, it's in two weeks. Don't tell me you came to Rio without realizing Carnival was starting soon."

He shook his head. "I didn't come for Carnival."

Al was studying him with an amused expression now. "So, how _did_ you decide to come here? Did you throw a dart at a board with country names on it, it landed on Brazil and you said, 'Okay, Brazil it is'?"

"Not exactly," Sam replied, unable to stop the laughter that came. "It's…a little hard to explain exactly what drew me here."

"Yeah, I bet."

"Is that what you're here for? Carnival?"

Sam's laugh immediately faded as he watched that same expression of deep grief flicker over Al's face once more when he answered, "No, I'm not here for Carnival either," and turned back to stare at the face of Pedra da Gávea.

Al's pain was palpable but Sam had no idea how he could help him. Even when they knew each other it wasn't ever easy to draw information out of him if he didn't want to talk about it. Now that he was a stranger to the man it would likely be a daunting task.

As they sat together without speaking he found his eye wandering to the patched-up backpack that lay on the rock beside them. Looking more closely now he noticed that each of the patches contained a different country name and they were sewn on in neat rows. There must have been close to one hundred of them. Almost the entire surface of the pack was filled.

"Did you visit all of those countries?" Sam asked, astonished.

He shook his head. "Trudy did." Again Al's voice was so quiet that Sam almost didn't hear him.

"Trudy?" he repeated breathlessly. Al had a sister Trudy, he knew. She had Down syndrome and had died of pneumonia back in the nineteen-fifties.

Another protracted silence stretched between them before Al finally spoke, through gritted teeth.

"My daughter. This was her backpack."

_Was._

Sam felt his heart sink. He was too late. Al had another daughter Trudy in this timeline and something had happened to her, had happened before he leaped in. But maybe if Al would talk to him, if he could get more information he could leap back…

"There must be close to a hundred patches on there," he murmured.

"Yeah," Al sighed. He picked up the backpack and set it on his lap. For a long time he stared at it, fingering several of the patches, his expression inscrutable. Then he took another deep breath and kept his eyes on the pack as with great sadness and also great pride he began to talk about the extraordinary young woman who was Trudy Calavicci.

Curious and adventurous Trudy had a zest for life and new experiences that was equal to her father's. Al told him about how she'd left home a year and a half ago to work her way around the world with nothing but a plane ticket to Amsterdam, a backpack and one thousand dollars in travelers' cheques on her person, money she'd saved working. For eighteen months she'd circumvented the world, often working her passage from continent to continent as crew and taking a wide variety of jobs everywhere she went, from teaching English in Japan to picking cherries in France to driving an overland touring bus through Mexico. It never seemed to occur to her that she was taking risks wherever she went. She was fearless.

"Trudy left school halfway through to go traveling. College didn't interest her so she saw no reason to stay. It's not that she wasn't smart. She was. She was brilliant. But she always found school boring, even as a little girl. She wanted to learn about the world by having experiences and meeting different people, not sitting in a classroom. Stepped foot on every continent except Antarctica. In each country she visited she bought a patch with the country name on it and sewed it on. She sewed from left to right in rows, working her way from the top down. This pack became a map of her entire trip. She started here," Al pointed to the Netherlands patch. "In Amsterdam. Venezuela is the last patch she sewed on, down here. Brazil was the last country she came to but she never…_I'll_ buy that one and sew it on for her. Right here next to Venezuela."

_Oh, God_.

Sam didn't need to ask – Al had already told him what happened without actually telling him. This was why the ranger gave him special treatment, allowing him into the park before it opened and leaving him alone up here. This was why he kept staring at the incomprehensible, indifferent face of that rock as if maybe it could give him an answer he was looking for.

Al hadn't come to Rio for Carnival. He'd come for his daughter's remains.

"She didn't go with a guide," he murmured unthinkingly to himself but Al heard him.

"Trudy was extremely independent." Al's eyes were filled with pain, his voice tight. "She wanted to do everything on her own and she didn't like to have to ask anyone for help."

_Like her father_, Sam thought sorrowfully.

"She was a lot like me. We even shared the same birthday. Maybe she was too much like me. Maybe she would have been better off if she wasn't…" Al brought his hands up to his face and pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. "God, I don't know why the hell I'm telling _you_ about any of this," he muttered gruffly. "I don't even know you."

"I don't mind listening," Sam offered gently.

He lowered his hands and looked at him. "Oh, hell, you must be a shrink."

"I'm not a shrink…I'm just willing to listen if you feel like talking."

"Just a Good Samaritan who happened along at the right time," Al remarked, his mouth twisting into a rueful smile.

Sam gazed at his old friend compassionately. "You did seem like you were very…very low when I first heard you…when I first came up here."

Al laughed a short, sad laugh. "Yeah, well, you didn't look too good then either."

"No, I guess I didn't," Sam replied, smiling abashedly.

"I'm sorry for your loss, too."

"My loss…"

"Your friend."

Tears suddenly filled Sam's eyes unexpectedly and he turned his face away. Al did always have an uncanny ability to read people. Even people he didn't know. He was an astute observer long before he was Sam's literal observer.

"I just miss him, that's all." He shook his head and wiped a hand across his eyes. "I never really got to say goodbye to him."

Al was quiet for a few moments.

"That always makes it harder," he said softly. He paused. "I remind you of him. You look at me and talk to me like I _am_ him."

"I'm sorry. I…"

"Nothing to be sorry about," he cut off the explanation with a shrug.

He met his eyes and said, meaningfully, "He was my best friend. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me. And I never really thanked him…I never told him how much I appreciated him."

"I'm sure he knew. And appreciated you, too."

"I hope so."

Somehow hearing the words from Al comforted him even though this wasn't really _his_ Al and it didn't exactly have the same meaning. But maybe, he thought, on some cosmic level this Al understood, even recognized him in some way though he didn't know him.

_Wishful thinking._

Still, there were stranger things in the universe. He and Al had only just met in this timeline yet he felt incredibly that they talked fairly easily and had already made a sort of connection. And…different as things were he was still Al.

"A lot of people go through life without ever having such a good friend," Al added, sounding wistful. "You're very lucky."

"Yeah," he said with a rueful smile. "I was."

They both lapsed into silence again. Al continued to eye the face of Pedra da Gávea. Sam stared at it as well, glancing at his friend every once in a while then deciding finally to take the chance, to come straight out and ask him what he wanted to know.

"When did it happen? If you don't mind me asking…"

"Last Monday," he answered after a slight hesitation. "She was staying in a hostel and some travelers that she'd become friendly with noticed on Tuesday morning that she hadn't been in her bed Monday night. One person remembered she'd gone hiking in Tijuca so they started looking for her here. They found her body Wednesday morning and I got the call that afternoon. I got here Thursday. We're still…deciding the best way to deal with her remains, whether to cremate here so it'll be easier…and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with all her stuff. Right now it's in our suite at the hotel." His hands and his voice shook. "I was gonna come alone…to bring her back home…but my daughters insisted on coming. I think they were afraid of what I was gonna do. Well, Sam was. My oldest. Thinks she's responsible for everyone, including me. She thinks I've gone crazy. Eh, maybe they all think it. Maybe I am. I've been coming up to the top of this damn mountain every morning since I got here and staring at that ugly face up there."

"I doubt your daughters think anything like that. They're grieving and they probably know how much you are too and…and they're just worried about you, worried about you coming up here all the time and dealing with all of it by yourself. They probably just want you to know that you don't have to…you don't have to deal with the pain all alone."

"Maybe." Al released a shaky breath. "Probably."

"I'm sure of it. Do you spend the whole day here?"

"Just the mornings. The girls are worried about me climbing up here…Sam is the only one who says anything but I know they're all worried."

Sam waited patiently for him to continue.

"She wasn't even twenty-three years old yet. This June." Al rubbed his face with both hands. "God, she went to places where there was terrible political unrest. Made me nervous as hell, especially with everything that's going on these days and her being American. I don't know, maybe I should have talked her out of going. Thing is she might have gone anyway, or ended up resenting me if she didn't go. She was a grown up. At a certain point you have to let your kids make their own choices and let them be who they are. Besides, I was as proud of her as I was worried…and she was okay. Then she came here, a country that was comparatively calm. And right there is the last place that she was alive in this world."

"I'm sorry, Al."

Al released another shaky breath. "At least Beth never had to see this."

"Beth?" Sam whispered.

"My ex-wife. She passed away two years ago."

_Ex-wife?_

"Only a couple of years after we split up. She deserved so much better." He rubbed his face again then shook his head, looking disgusted. "God, I'm selfish. Sitting up here feeling sorry for myself. I should be staying with my daughters. I should be worrying about how they feel losing their sister. What kind of thoughtless bastard am I?"

Sam reached out and for the first time in years touched Al's shoulder comfortingly.

"No," he said quietly. "You're grieving for your child. And I know you probably feel like you want to be by yourself, like you want to shut everything out. But maybe you could ask your daughters to come up here with you. They may not want to but maybe asking them will make a difference."

"Yeah. Or I could just stop coming up here. It's not like it's gonna change anything."

Both men were silent again for a time.

"How many daughters do you have?" Sam asked.

"Four including Trudy. The youngest two are identical twins."

He couldn't help but smile slightly at the irony of Al having four daughters in the new timeline instead of four additional wives. But it grieved Sam to learn that even after he'd changed things for his friend, Al's happily ever after with Beth had turned out to be not so happy after all.

After another minute Al stood up abruptly. "Well, I think I've spent enough time up here. I should be getting back to my family so they won't worry anymore."

Sam rose quickly. "Do you mind if I walk down with you? I don't really know my way around…"

Al shook his head. "It's probably a good idea. They recommend that people hike most of the trails here with at least one other person. And I still think you don't look so hot. You sure you're okay? Maybe you should see a doctor."

"I'm sure."

"Maybe it's just that you have yet to get your Brazilian tan."

He grinned. "Well, a sun worshipper I'm not…"

"You don't have to be. You'll get tan in this city just by walking around outside."

"Thanks for the drink." A small amount of liquid still sloshed around inside the carton.

"Go ahead and finish that. You need it and I have another one in the pack."

As they made their descent Sam remarked on Al's earlier statement that he was a pilot, guessing correctly that it would get him talking about it. Though he'd already heard so many of the stories of Al's days as a pilot, he relished hearing him tell them again now. He said very little, other than asking questions to encourage him to continue. When Al turned the conversation around and asked him what he did besides coming to the aid of strangers like an overgrown Eagle Scout Sam laughed and simply told him that he was a doctor. As tempting as it was to reveal everything to Al about himself and Project Quantum Leap, and explain to him that in another timeline he _was_ his best friend, he knew he couldn't.

"Vacationing here now?" Al asked.

"Yeah, it's sort of a break from the usual."

They didn't hike all the way down to the exit. When they reached the beginning of the trail a man met them with a car and drove them the rest of the way. He spoke to Al in Portuguese, indicating Sam with a nod of his head and probably wanting to know where he'd come from. Whatever Al's answer it was enough to satisfy the man, who was probably one of the park guides. Sam wondered when Al had learned to speak Portuguese. His fluency in Italian had probably made it easier for him to pick it up even if he'd only just started to learn.

Sadness weighed on Sam as he and Al shook hands and prepared to part ways once they were out of the park. For the first time in a long time he didn't want to leap out. These days his leaps were taking longer, sometimes continuing for three weeks or more. Yet this one, the leap that he wanted to last more than anything, was cruelly the shortest of all. It wasn't fair. He wanted to stay with Al, at least for a little while longer, to just talk to him. They hadn't met on the Starbright Project back in the nineteen-eighties in this timeline but they'd met _now_, twenty years later. Perhaps they would form a new friendship if he stayed. It wouldn't be the same but maybe…

But he knew he couldn't. There was something he needed to do for Al, and for his family. At least he had to try.

"Nice meeting you, Sam. And…thanks."

Having decided that no matter how foolish he seemed it wouldn't matter once the leap ended, Sam pulled Al into a tight embrace. The other man was clearly startled by it but he seemed to understand and patiently tolerated it, even awkwardly reaching around and patting him on the back.

"It was good to meet you, Al," he said in a voice thick with emotion, finally releasing him. "Take care."

"Yeah, you, too. Take it easy. And hey, enjoy your break here." He indicated their surroundings with a movement of his eyes and a jerk of his head. "It _is_ a beautiful city."

"Goodbye, Al," he whispered as Al turned and went on his way, boarding a city bus that would take him back to where his other three daughters were waiting for him.

Sam watched until his friend disappeared from view and then he leaped.


	2. A Leap for Al

**Disclaimer:** None of it belongs to me. Just this story.

**Prompt:** lost

**trope_bingo Trope:** kidfic (free space)

**Summary:** A leap into 1944 has more far-reaching effects than Sam realizes.

**A/N:** Not beta'd yet.

* * *

**A LEAP FOR AL**

_**New York City**_**  
**_**November 19, 1944**_

Leaping in, Sam's first awareness was of sound, not directly around him but in the air nearby; the hum of traffic and honking of horns, the rumble of buses and trucks.

Quickly he worked to get his bearings in the new time and place. He stood alone on a sidewalk in the shadow of a rundown four story brick building. Across the secluded narrow street was a fenced-off vacant lot overgrown with wild grass and littered with debris. Cigarette butts and other small pieces of trash were strewn about the ground and an empty mashed-up wooden crate lay in the middle of the street, crushed by the wheels of a car probably. Gazing off to his right he could see the top of a nearby bridge, to his left more buildings in the distance.

The color of the sky and angle of the sun showed it to be late morning. He shivered in the chill wind and realized that wherever he was it was autumn coming on winter. For a change the clothing he wore upon arrival was not completely adequate for the climate. Threadbare tan trousers, shabby brown shoes that had seen better days, a worn-out brown sweater over a collared shirt and a thin brown coat made up the entirety of his attire along with the brown fedora he was holding in his hands and which he now put on his head; it would keep at least some heat in. He buttoned up the coat too now that his hands were free.

For a while he remained there, shoulders hunched against the cold, arms pinned to his sides and hands in his coat pockets, coveting the hot tropical climate of the last two leaps. Absently he noted the group of boys scampering through the grass in the empty lot and wondered how they'd managed to get in when it appeared to be off limits and the last place they ought to be playing.

_Probably climbed over the fence_, Sam thought, wondering if he was here for one or more of them.

They were different ages and came in all sizes and shapes. All wore newsboy-type caps and brown or grey winter jackets except for one small boy with a mop of dark curly hair who had no hat or coat but didn't seem to care at the moment. He ran about in a grey sweater, laughing and hollering with the others, clearly oblivious to the cold and enjoying himself.

Rustling paper on the ground caught his attention, a crumpled page of a newspaper pulled along in a gust of wind. He picked it up and unfurled it. It was from the _New York Times_, confirming that he was in New York City or its vicinity. His eye was immediately drawn to the date at the top.

_November 17, 1944!_

Sam couldn't believe it. There had been one other time, maybe two, when he leaped before the beginning of his own life span, but those were extraordinary circumstances. Once it was after the simo-leap with Al, after which each of them got a small part of the other's mind in the process of switching places. Sam was able to leap back into 1945 to save Al's life because a part of him _was_ Al. But that was all in another timeline. One leap had changed things, he discovered when he leaped to Rio in 2003 to help Al and his daughter; one leap to Beth to give her hope that her husband would return to her completely changed the path of his friend's life. The Al he encountered in 2003 was a stranger meeting him for the first time; the link between their minds never existed. He had no idea how he'd managed to leap all the way back to nearly ten years before his life began. Was he now able to leap beyond the parameters of the string theory of time travel?

He looked up at the sound of shouting and saw that a man was standing at the end of the street by the fence ordering the children out. A dozen boys scattered, several climbing over what appeared to be cinderblocks at the far end of the lot. Others came crawling through a rip at the bottom of the metal barrier, pouring onto the street and disappearing around the corner. Three of them walked over to the man after scrambling through the fence opening, including the little mop-topped boy with no hat or jacket who was nearly two heads shorter than the others. One of the boys began to speak to the man, gesturing to mop-top as he talked. But the man shook his head regretfully and left with the two bigger boys.

Mop-top turned and came trudging along the street toward Sam, dejectedly scuffing his little feet as he walked.

"Oh my God," Sam exclaimed under his breath as the boy drew close and with a shock he recognized a very young Al Calavicci.

Even under the dirt and with so many years off his face Sam would know that expression, those soulful dark eyes anywhere. November 1944. Al was ten years old, though he was much smaller than most boys his age would be and looked younger. This Al's mother had already left the family long ago, his father was dead by now and his younger sister Trudy sent away to an institution because that's what they did to kids with Down syndrome at this time. He was completely alone in the world.

Sam stood with his mouth ajar watching him pass then he began to trail after him as if hypnotized. Young Al wore only the grey sweater, navy blue trousers and black lace-up shoes, all of it old and worn, and he shivered visibly in the cold November air now that he wasn't distracted by play. As he followed the little boy around a corner and onto a main street a vague recollection came to his mind of Al in another timeline talking about running away from the orphanage.

"_I was cold, I was scared, I was lonely…"_

He wasn't certain he was here to do anything for Al or if he ought to interfere with his life at all. Despite the hardships, even tragedies in his young life Al managed to do just fine the first time around, without his intervention. In fact he grew up to be an extraordinary adult who did extraordinary things. But Sam was too curious and concerned about him to simply let him go. Maybe he could at least give him the jacket he was wearing.

#

Newspapers on display at a corner stand informed Sam that today was Sunday November 19th and he noticed now that he still held the crumpled page of the old paper that he'd picked up off the ground. He tossed it in the garbage can at the curb.

The ten-year-old version of his old friend led him away from the river and the bridge he'd seen, through streets lined with four and five story buildings, all residences and store fronts. Laundromats, candy and yarn shops, a jewelry and watch repair shop, a barber shop with an old fashioned red, white and blue striped pole, that offered ten-cent shaves and fifteen-cent haircuts. Some of the store signs were in Hebrew letters; he had no idea what they said but he recognized their appearance. Signs in the windows of several residences announced that there were rooms to let. The air smelled of the hot sweet potatoes and frankfurters that street vendors were selling off of their carts and the curbs were lined with parked trucks and old model Plymouths and Dodges. Despite the chill in the late autumn air people were gathered outside, standing in front of stoops or sitting on the steps, chatting, reading newspapers or waiting for their friends, children played on the stoops that hadn't been commandeered by adults.

An altercation of some sort was taking place near one of the sweet potato carts halfway down one street. Adults and children alike looked on as a couple of men argued with the vendor. Al moved closer to the action, apparently finding the commotion very interesting, at least for the first five minutes or so. Then he slipped out from among the quarreling men and gawking spectators and strolled off down the street, one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around his thin little body, and turned another corner into an alley with no outlet. A moment later his head disappeared. Drawing closer Sam saw that there was a concrete staircase on one side that led down to a locked basement. The little boy was at the bottom of the stairwell huddled on the ground in the corner, munching on a sweet potato that Sam hadn't even seen him lift from the cart and trying to stay warm.

_Oh, Al._

He didn't want to scare the child so he casually continued on without stopping. Up ahead the alley opened into a courtyard surrounded by the nearby buildings.

Al had rarely shared stories from his childhood but Sam remembered hearing a few. Stories about living in the orphanage and not liking it, about running away and what life was like on the streets. His own childhood had been privileged, he'd come to realize a long time ago, especially when compared to Al's. He knew things were difficult for his friend as a kid but experiencing the reality of it right before his eyes was jarring. Who knew how many days he'd already been on the streets at this point?

"_I was cold, I was scared, I was lonely. I got so desperate I even tried to pick a guy's pocket."_

"Black Magic's!" The vivid recollection came upon Sam so abruptly and powerfully it made him halt in his tracks. He stood rooted to the spot, absorbed in the memory of that leap. The pool hall, the image of an old black man with glasses thick as Coke bottles staring back at him from the bathroom mirror, Al beside him talking excitedly about Charlie 'Black Magic' Walters, pool giant and the man he'd leaped into to help that time.

"_He didn't turn me in to the cops. He fed me. He bought me a jacket. He said to me…that kids shouldn't be in orphanages. That a kid should be raised by a family and I should travel with him until we could find one. Well I did. We drifted around together…we went to Chi, went to St. Louie, went to the Big Easy. Where…he got busted for shooting pool in a 'whites only' pool hall."_

Sam wondered if maybe this was the day Al met Black Magic. Al was ten so this was the right year. He knew how important that man was to his friend, what a difference he made in his life. If help was about to come to him was Sam's intervention needed? And if not why had he leaped here to where Al was again? In an odd way he was doing exactly what he'd originally intended to do traveling in time – or at least what he thought he intended – to observe the past without interfering in it, without changing things.

Unless…was it possible that he was here to make sure Al met Black Magic, that there was some kind of recursive loop occurring in which Al had been telling him about an event that _he_ had already made happen and would make happen again? It was strange the way he kept encountering him on his recent leaps, he mused, as if Al was somehow calling out to him through time.

The scraping of metal behind him drew Sam back to the present and he straightened, turning to see what the noise was. A young woman dressed in a full white apron had come through a door and was setting out a trash can. Sounds of running water, utensils and pots banging inside the half-open door revealed it to be the exit from someone's kitchen. She disappeared inside again, the door shut and a moment later Sam saw small hands close around the railing that cordoned off the stairwell and then Al poking his head up to peer at the garbage can.

"No…" Sam whispered and his hand went to the pocket where he normally kept loose change. There couldn't be any harm in giving the child change so he could get something to eat from somewhere other than the garbage, could there? He just had to figure out how to approach him without spooking him.

But when Al finally crept back up to street level he only eyed the metal bin dubiously, went over and lifted the lid, looked over the contents and then replaced the cover. There was obviously nothing in there worth taking and the little boy didn't look surprised. It was 1944 and America was still rationing, Sam remembered, still salvaging every last scrap of everything and wasting nothing.

Al walked back to the street and turned right. Sam hurried after him, having made up his mind to help him get some food. He was nearly caught up to him at the next intersection when he glimpsed the ball that had come bouncing off one of the stoops and now rolled into the street, between the passing cars. Before he knew he needed to he'd forgotten about Al and was lurching forward, blocking the path of the small child that had come dashing after it. She rammed into his legs instead and then looked up at him with dismay in her dark eyes.

"It's okay." Sam knelt down, resting his hands on both her shoulders and meeting her eye. She was tiny, not quite four feet tall yet, with dark pigtails. "But don't ever run into the street without looking. Ever. It's dangerous."

Her eyes wandered past him and to where the ball had landed.

"Hey," he said, keeping his voice soft but firm and drawing her attention back, "the ball can be replaced. You can't. I'll go and get it for you. But you have to be careful from now on, okay? You shouldn't even step off the curb without a grown-up holding your hand." He glanced about, wondering where the grown-up she belonged to might be then brought his gaze back to her. "Okay?"

Staring at him solemnly she said in a timid voice, "Okay."

"Wait here and I'll go get it."

When the oncoming cars had passed and the street was clear he made his way to the other side to retrieve her ball, which had come to rest against the curb near a fire hydrant.

"Here you go."

She took it from him, mumbled a thank you and dashed back up the stoop where she'd come from. A woman was standing in the doorway to the building now, firmly calling 'Naomi' and beckoning to the little girl. Her mother no doubt. Probably she'd witnessed what just happened through a front window; she looked like she'd come running. After casting a harried but grateful look at Sam and mouthing a 'thank you' she dragged her daughter inside by the arm, scolding her for not staying on the steps like she'd been told. Her tirade was cut off with the slam of the door and with a shake of his head he continued on toward where he'd last seen Al. There was no sign of him on any of the streets that branched off of the intersection.

A hollow ache filled his chest even as he told himself that he'd obviously leaped here for that little girl and not to help his friend. In fact in a way his young friend had helped him, once more serving as his guide though unwittingly, and leading him right to the place and time he needed to be. There was an odd wonder in that. Little Naomi was getting her ear chewed off right now, but at least she wasn't lying in the street beneath a car.

With a melancholy sigh Sam crossed the street at the intersection and ambled on aimlessly, wondering if there was something else he needed to do; he didn't feel ready to leap yet. He wandered past more store fronts and walk-up apartment buildings, more children laughing and playing on steps and sidewalks. It was extraordinary how even the littlest children played so freely here on these city streets without adult supervision. He grew up on a farm in a small town in the Midwest where everyone knew one another, people didn't need to lock their doors and there were far less dangerous things; but this was New York City.

In a small park at one corner another group of boys romped about and his eyes searched futilely for a small hatless boy in a grey sweater among them. A sense of desolation permeated him and he lowered his head, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets and pushing on.

His stomach began to rumble and he recalled seeing a sign for a luncheonette down one of the streets he'd crossed a couple of blocks back. He turned and retraced his steps, thinking wryly that maybe he hadn't leaped out yet simply because he needed to eat.

He spotted the prominent red Coca Cola sign down the street to his left and turned. Five girls were jumping rope on the sidewalk across from the luncheonette, all of them wearing heavy coats over their dresses and skirts. He went inside and hung his hat and coat up on the rack near the door. Relishing the warmth and the smells of coffee and frying potatoes in the place he took a seat at the counter and perused the fare listed on the board above his head, quickly calculating that he could definitely afford a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee.

Sam's gaze lowered to the mirror in front of him and he stared, still somewhat dazed to see his own grown self reflected back again after so many years of seeing other people's faces. His cleft chin in his now care-worn and lined face, a prominent shock of white in the front of his thick sandy brown hair, crows' feet in the corners of his grey-green eyes. The changes that time had wrought to his visage while he wasn't paying heed were unsettling. Were there even more grey hairs on his head than last time he saw himself? Unconsciously he raised his hand and swept the white lock aside with two fingers. It spilled back onto his forehead as soon as he released it.

"It's a nice face."

The waitress's voice pulled Sam out of his reverie. She was facing the mirror and studying his reflection too, standing to one side of him so as not to block his view of himself. When she saw that she had his attention she turned to look directly at him, still smiling affably.

"What can I get for you?"

She was a matronly woman, probably in her late fifties, with blue eyes and greying brown hair that was tucked up neatly into the powder blue cap with white trim that went with her uniform. The name 'Gertrude' was embroidered on her upper left pocket. There was kindness and something else in her voice and expression when she spoke to him and his throat began to inexplicably tighten. He forced away the lump that threatened to form and gave her his order, greeting her by name with as amiable a smile as he could muster.

When she had gone his eyes briefly shifted back to his image in the glass. Frowning he allowed his gaze to wander down the length of the mirror and flicker over the reflected faces of the other people sitting along the counter beside him; it settled on a familiar face at the end and his heart skipped a beat. A black man with glasses, ten years younger than when Sam saw him in the mirror so many leaps ago, the hair not nearly as grey, the lenses not nearly as thick now. But it was without a doubt Charlie 'Black Magic' Walters. The child next to him had his face bent over a bowl of soup but Sam could easily see the top of his dark curly head. Black Magic pushed another bowl in front of the little boy as Gertrude removed the one he was cleaning and in one smooth movement young Al lifted his spoon from one bowl and placed it right into the next without missing a beat.

Moments later Gertrude brought his order and Sam dug into his own soup, raising his head now and then to glance at the reflection of the pair at the end of the counter. Black Magic was doing the talking while Al continued eating as if he might never see food again, nodding every once in a while. A couple of times he looked up and smiled at the man who was being so kind to him. Warmth spread through Sam's chest and the empty aching inside began to ebb.

Black Magic and Al were still eating when he stood up to pay his bill. He walked out of the luncheonette, leaving his friend in good hands and on the verge of embarking on one of the better experiences of his childhood, when for a short time he'd have a family again. For a while Sam stood in the shadow of a nearby awning, thinking pleasantly on that and watching idly as the same group of girls jumped rope across the street. Or maybe they were different girls who looked similar. Paying closer attention to them now he thought they made an interesting picture; the two standing at each end turning the rope were identical twins and they reminded him of Ella and Fina, Al's twins, with their long dark hair. His lips twitched into a small smile.

Some moments passed before it hit him and he nearly staggered backward. He knew Al's twin daughters' names! And what they looked like. Was it possible? His leap to Beth had altered everything, and Al had only mentioned Samantha and Trudy by name during that leap into Rio not the twins, he was sure of it. He felt a spark of hope. Something about this leap had changed things again. He'd only stopped a little girl from running into the street, but maybe somehow it made a difference and their paths crossed after all…

But he had no time to ponder it further for the leap began to take him and the tableau of the jump ropers and 1944 New York City dissolved before his eyes.


	3. Exile

**Disclaimer:** Not mine, just this story.

**Prompt:** bruise

**trope_bingo Trope:** secret child

**Summary:** Sam leaps to help a troubled young girl who seems familiar to him.

**A/N:** This part is much longer and is not beta'd yet. The towns of Ashville and Weston, Kansas are fictional. Although Al is mentioned this part is Sam-centric; the next part will focus on Al again.

**WARNING:** Story is not explicit but there is implied off-screen non-con, abuse and violence against a minor; contains under-age alcohol abuse.

* * *

**EXILE**

_**Ashville, Kansas  
July 2, 2012**_

I

Less than a minute had passed after Sam arrived in the new time and place when he realized that there was somebody lying in a ditch a few feet from where he stood.

"Oh, boy," he moaned, rushing forward.

A teenage girl, lying on her back unconscious, her long hair fanned out in the dirt. He quickly dropped to his knees, hit with the smell of alcohol the moment he got close, and just as she began to retch he rolled her onto her side, gathering her hair back and positioning her head so she wouldn't aspirate her own vomit. He'd literally come in the nick of time.

But she wasn't out of danger yet. She hadn't regained consciousness and if it was alcohol poisoning, which was likely, she needed an emergency room. Surveying their surroundings Sam realized that unfortunately the nearest hospital was probably several miles away. The place was remote, with no lights by the road or from a nearby house. Aside from the noises the girl made which along with the stench were making his own stomach turn there was only the sound of the katydids. He would have to do this on his own.

Sam supported her and held her head as her body violently rejected the poison inside it. Her throat would be raw and sore in the morning. He cut off the thought that she might not make it until then and if she did there was no telling what damage might be done. She badly needed water. The alcohol alone was enough to dehydrate her, but this combined with the stiflingly hot night was going to exacerbate it.

When she finally stopped throwing up he made sure her airway was completely clear then took her pulse and checked her breathing.

The ditch was right next to the road and although there wasn't even the distant noise of a car approaching it was a precarious spot for them to be loitering on the ground, especially at night. Several yards away he could see the ghostly shape of a Ferris wheel, the skeleton of an empty carnival in the middle of the field. It was the nearest and only visible sign of shelter and he decided to take her there. Chances were good that there would be a pump or another water source of some kind.

He scooped her up and carried her across the field where the deserted carnival was poised to open in the morning. Besides the Ferris wheel there were locked food stands and game booths, a carousel, moonwalk and some small tents. Large signs affixed to the ticket booths listed the entry prices and informed him that he'd leaped into the future, specifically to the year 2012, sometime around June 28th, but possibly as late as July 2nd.

The carousel was the closest thing to the entrance with a roof. He set her down on the platform and sat beside her, catching his breath after his effort. Sweat was dripping down his face and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his shirt.

A cloud moved off and in the light of the nearly full moon he looked closely at the girl. Anger seared through him when he spied the deep bruises on her neck, imprints of fingertips where someone with great strength had grabbed her, and still more of the same bruises on her bare arms.

Sam took a deep breath and examined her carefully to determine if she had broken bones. Satisfied that she didn't he rolled her onto her side again and positioned her head so that her airway remained open. Then he kept vigil, monitoring her pulse and her breathing, periodically repositioning her from side to side and attempting to revive her, praying.

After a long while she moaned softly. Her eyes finally fluttered open, dull at first then they widened and a wild spark came into them the moment she focused on him. She emitted a muffled cry.

"It's okay." He held his hands up, fingers splayed, keeping his voice soft. "Please don't be afraid. My name is Sam. I'm a doctor."

She struggled to sit up and Sam reached out to assist.

"I'm going to give you some help, okay?" He continued speaking in soothing tones. "I'm glad that you're awake now. We need to keep you that way until this is all out of your system."

The girl mumbled something thickly. It was mostly unintelligible but Sam managed to pick out the f-word. Undaunted he gently lifted her up to sitting, bracing her against his body.

A long time spent asking questions to keep her talking passed before she finally became coherent and able to sit up on her own. Just as he expected there was a water pump at the edge of the grounds and he brought her to it once she was reasonably able to walk with assistance. He helped her clean up, drying her tears with a strip of cloth ripped from the bottom of his white polo shirt, tenderly brushing the dirt out of her hair with his fingers, coaxing her to drink a little bit of the water when her crying subsided. Then he took her back to the carousel and insisted that she remain sitting up, tired as she was.

"Sorry. You need to stay awake right now. Do you remember how much you drank?"

Unsurprisingly he received no reply. So far she had refused to tell him her name or where she lived, instead responding to each of those questions with one of her own. If nothing else it showed that her mind was sharp at least. On the other hand she didn't have a problem telling him her favorite color was purple when he asked, or that the one thing she missed more than anything was having a piano to play. So he kept her talking about the piano and music to keep her awake.

She was four when she started taking lessons.

"You started early," he remarked.

"Uncle Al encouraged me."

There wasn't another name in the world that could grab his attention like that one could and his head jerked up when she said it. The odd thought crossed his mind that maybe he'd run into _his_ Al's niece, but he dismissed the possibility immediately. This girl was in her teens. Any niece of Al's would be much older. Or was she maybe a great niece?

Sam asked her what kind of music she liked to play, named a few of the pieces and exercise books he'd worked through when he took lessons as a kid and asked if her teachers used the same ones. He listened with rapt attention as she told him tearfully that everything changed for the worse when they sold their house and everything in it – including the piano which was what she really cared about; they needed the money they'd get for it and where they were going they couldn't take it with them. She was seven then.

As they continued talking a faint orange haze appeared on the horizon. Morning came soon after, and when the sky lightened Sam caught his first clear look at the young woman and his heart clenched at the sight.

_My God._

She was even younger than he'd originally thought. She wore a black tank top, denim shorts and worn-out Sketchers, silver with purple and lavender striping. Her petite body had already blossomed into the figure of a woman but her face was that of a child; she couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. With profound sorrow Sam regarded her features and the bruises. A large nasty scrape covered her right shin and both knees were badly skinned and dotted with tiny patches of bright red blood.

Her dark eyes widened in astonishment and Sam saw recognition in them, as unlikely as that seemed. Where would she know him from? His photograph did grace the cover of Time Magazine when he won the Nobel Prize for physics, but that was so many years ago and it seemed strange that this young girl would have seen that old issue yet alone had enough interest in it to remember. He couldn't imagine where else she would have seen him. The expression of surprise faded and her brow furrowed. Sam returned her piercing stare, stunned by it, especially when after a moment he realized that she was familiar to him too, though that couldn't be possible; he was sure he'd never met her before…

"You don't need to stay," she said curtly.

"Yes I do. You've still got alcohol in your system. And I'm here to help you."

Bitterly and almost too quietly for him to hear she scoffed, "You're late."

He was taken aback and he didn't speak for a while.

"Look," he said finally, "I know I'm a stranger to you but…I found you alone and unconscious by the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. You made it into the morning, thank God. But you could still be sick. What did you drink?"

Though not unexpected her reticence was frustrating.

"Do you know what alcohol poisoning is?" he persisted. "You could have died from it last night. If I hadn't come along…"

Her eyes began to glisten and she wiped them with the back of her hand. He pressed on, hopeful that he was getting through to her.

"Where did you get it? You're too young to buy it yourself."

"I was at a party," she finally admitted.

Sam brought his hand up and pinched the bridge of his nose worriedly. God only knew what might have happened to her before she ended up in that ditch where he found her. Several ideas crossed his mind and they all sickened him. Her fellow partiers obviously weren't concerned about her safety or he wouldn't have found her the way he did. Were they all just kids or were they adults who had been utterly careless and irresponsible?

"Well, I don't think I should leave you alone yet," he said. "What's your name?"

Wordlessly she raised her hand to her neck, her fingers gingerly touching the bruises, and the expression that flickered across her face made his heart break. Ignoring him she stood up awkwardly and with one hand pressed to her head staggered towards the center of the platform between the painted horses, using them for support.

"Wait, where are you going?" He leaped up to follow, anxious that she could fall and hurt herself.

She disappeared into the control booth, emerging a minute later carrying a light purple knapsack.

"You've been sleeping here?"

It was the only explanation for why her stuff would be stowed there; she was too young to work the carousel or anywhere for that matter. She was probably sneaking onto the empty grounds every night after the carnival shut down. Last night she hadn't quite made it back.

Sam took a seat next to her on the edge of the platform, putting enough space between them so she wouldn't feel threatened in any way. He watched as she unzipped one of the pack's pockets and rummaged through it, finally withdrawing a bottle of Advil.

"You shouldn't take those when you've been drinking."

She stared at him blankly and popped two tablets that she'd already shaken out of the bottle into her mouth. He winced.

"I know you probably have a headache, but taking those while there's still alcohol in your system isn't a good idea. They can damage your stomach and liver. And you were in very bad shape before. You really need to have water and juice after drinking as much as…"

The girl spit the pills out onto the grass. "It's just a hangover. I've had them before."

"You're a little young."

"I'm seventeen," she retorted.

"Well…" Sam didn't believe her for a moment but he decided not to pursue it. "That's still young. And drinking like that isn't good for anyone, at any age. It's dangerous. Why would you want to do that to yourself?"

Abruptly she stood up, slung the knapsack over one shoulder and headed back toward the control booth. Her gait looked a little steadier now but Sam went after her, still worried about her equilibrium. He stopped and turned away when he realized that she was probably going in there to change into clean clothes.

While he waited for her to emerge he pondered what to do next. He'd saved her life but she wasn't out of danger; she needed him and he couldn't leave her alone out here anyway. Unfortunately he didn't yet know exactly what he could do for her. Maybe he was here to help her get home. Then again maybe home was where she was abused and that's why she ran away. He sighed gloomily at that thought.

He absentmindedly reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet. There was cash inside as well as his driver's license. He straightened to his full height and walked to the edge of the platform to get a better view of his surroundings. The terrain was level and open as far as the eye could see, fields of green and pale gold stretched off for miles on all sides; farms. Sam smiled wistfully. He was in the Midwest, but something about the landscape and its colors, the dry early morning heat and cloudless bright blue sky, the smell of the air gave him a sense that this was further south and west than his home state, maybe Oklahoma or Kansas.

Rows of large trucks were parked on the grass several yards away to his left, the vehicles that carried the dismantled carnival rides and booths from town to town. He figured the workers were probably staying in a trailer park somewhere closer to town; way off in the distance to his right was the outline of what looked like one, the only other thing in sight that wasn't part of the uninterrupted flatness. Maybe there was a diner or a store where he could buy food for them. He was feeling his own hunger pangs and the girl, who still hadn't told him her name or revealed much else, needed something solid in her stomach.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, turning as soon as he heard her soft footsteps behind him. Her hair fell limply about her shoulders, still filled with particles of dirt. She wore the same denim shorts but she'd changed into a lavender tee-shirt with a white applique butterfly.

"I'm fine," she said. Her hand went to her neck once more though and a deep shadow passed over her face.

"I was going to head into town to get some food. It would do you good to drink some juice even if you don't have an appetite yet. We can go in together or…if you tell me where you live I can take you there."

She slipped off the purple elastic that encircled her wrist and used it to tie her hair back in a ponytail. Then she knelt and set her knapsack down, unzipped the main compartment and fished out an empty water bottle and a baseball cap which she mashed onto her head, pulling the bill down over her eyes. The hat was red with the Indiana University Hoosiers logo embroidered in white on the front.

"Indiana, huh? That's where I'm from. Elk Ridge."

"I'm not from Indiana. Someone gave me the hat."

"Do you live around here?"

"You're really nosy, you know?"

"Sorry. I tend to be curious about people…and I am concerned about you."

The girl groaned and heaved an exasperated sigh. He suppressed his own sigh of annoyance, recalling what his younger sister Katie was like at this age. She rose, hoisted the knapsack onto both shoulders and went to the water pump. Sam strode after her and waited while she refilled her bottle.

"I can take care of myself," she told him as they walked toward the dusty country road. "You don't need to worry about me."

"I'm not so sure about that."

Another disgusted sound was the only response he got.

"At least let me walk with you to town. It's a long way and we're both going there anyway. You're dehydrated from last night and it's hot out…"

"I have water now." She held up the full water bottle, opened it and took a sip from it.

"You're still better off not walking the distance alone. Please. I know you don't know me…and there's no reason why you would assume you can trust me, but I'd like to help if I can. I just want to at least make sure you're somewhere safe."

"There isn't anywhere safe," she said dejectedly.

Sam's mouth fell open but he said nothing. He had no idea how to respond.

"You still haven't told me your name," he said instead.

For a few minutes she hesitated. Then she said, "Alison."

II

They got a lift from a man who luckily passed by in a pickup truck and was heading through town. The diner on the outskirts consisted of two booths, a counter with eight stools and two picnic tables with umbrellas outside in the back. Alison hesitated by the entrance, withdrawing from her pocket the little bit of money she had left, all coins, counting and recounting it with an unhappy expression. After checking his wallet again Sam offered to treat her to breakfast. Despite the pain, hunger and exhaustion that was clear on her face she remained reluctant. He didn't want to pressure her so he headed inside after buying a newspaper from the dispenser out front and allowed her to make her own decision. She hurried after him a moment later.

Now they sat across from each other in one of the booths, both with a tall glass of orange juice in front of them that the waitress had brought before they even asked, listening to the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and the overlapping conversations of the other patrons. The air in the place was thick with the smell of frying bacon, brewing coffee and something sweet made with cinnamon. It was nine o'clock according to the clock on the wall. Two grey-haired men sat at the counter drinking coffee and chatting, a group of younger men occupied the other booth.

Sam found himself staring at Alison, unable to help himself. He couldn't place who she reminded him of, but the sense of recognition was powerful. Delicate features in a slight face, olive skin that was deeply tanned now from the summer sun, long dark hair, dark eyes, a cleft in her chin. Vague images of someone flitted through his mind and flickered out of his grasp before the face could become clear…

"What are you staring at?"

She sounded cross and Sam snapped out of his daydream with a blink. "I'm sorry," he said sheepishly, but he didn't avert his gaze. "You remind me of someone."

Alison rolled her eyes.

"The signs on the ticket booths say the last day of the carnival is July 2nd," he said unruffled. "What will you do when they leave?"

Silence stretched between them. She just stared into her juice.

"Here you go, folks," the waitress said cheerfully as she approached and set their plates down. "Enjoy."

He glanced at the name tag pinned to her apron and gave her a pleasant smile. "Thank you, Mary."

"Thanks," Alison echoed, keeping her face hidden.

"You're not from Indiana and you're not from here," Sam said, picking up his fork and digging into his poached eggs. "Where are you from?"

The glare she gave him made him shake his head in disbelief. Never in a million years would he have dreamed of talking or acting to an adult when he was a kid the way she did. She was obnoxious.

Well, he'd already saved her from immediate death and made sure she wasn't stranded in the middle of nowhere. He would see to it that she was recovered from last night, fed and in an adult's care, and then he'd leap out. There really wasn't anything else he could do for her especially if she didn't want to be helped.

Still, he was strangely drawn to her and he couldn't shake the feeling that he needed to do more. She really was just a child after all, wounded in a way that he didn't yet understand. He had to chalk her behavior up to that and be patient.

"We move around a lot," she blurted out.

He didn't ask the next question right away, busying himself with opening a packet of strawberry jam and spreading it on his toast. Alison poked at her own food.

"I know you probably don't have much of an appetite," he said after a while, "but you really need to get solid food into you. At least eat a little bit of toast."

Defiantly she pushed her plate away, picked up her glass and took a few sips of juice.

_Or don't_, he thought, irked.

"Who is 'we'?" He paused to scoop up another forkful of eggs. "You said '_we_ move around a lot'."

"So, what were _you_ doing at the carnival in the middle of the night?" she asked pointedly, so blatantly and abruptly changing the subject that it took him a minute to decide whether or not he wanted to allow her to throw him off track. He took a bite of toast and gathered his thoughts.

"It's a little hard to explain…"

"Don't you live anywhere?"

"No, I move around a lot, too," he admitted.

"Why?"

"Because of my work."

"I thought you said you're a doctor."

"Yeah, I am." He took a deep breath. Somehow she'd managed to put him on the defensive. "I don't have a practice…"

"Are you one of the Doctors without Borders? Like, literally?"

"You could call it that I suppose. Yes." He frowned. "Alison, where are your parents?"

In her haste to get up she nearly spilled her juice.

"Wait…" Sam urged, dropping his toast on his plate and holding his hand out.

"What?" she snapped. "I need to go to the bathroom."

Her knapsack was still on her seat and he relaxed. As she headed toward the back of the diner he caught Mary's eye and ordered a coffee. Then he picked up the newspaper he'd bought, a Kansas paper, and checked the date. Monday July 2nd. The carnival would be packing up and setting off for its next scheduled destination that night. If Alison was temporarily making her home there, and he was certain she was, she would now be homeless. He blew out a breath and leaned back in his seat, troubled.

Mary brought his coffee and a small pitcher. He stirred skim milk into his cup and listened to the conversation between the two men at the counter. Apparently the people working the carnival were sleeping in trailers just outside of town and their presence had been disruptive for the locals, particularly the previous night when they threw an especially loud and rowdy party that went on well past midnight. He wondered if it was the party Alison attended; and when Mary declared with certainty that there were drugs there, he realized with alarm that her condition when he found her may not have been caused by alcohol alone.

Sam laid his teaspoon on the table and pushed his plate aside. He opened the paper and flipped the pages until he reached the local community news section. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for; maybe a listing among the ads for a local youth shelter where he could bring Alison.

The article that caught his eye was short and buried in the middle of a page. It was the word 'carnival' in the title that grabbed his attention. Police were still searching for a young teenager, believed to be the daughter of a woman whose body was discovered outside of a town called Weston two weeks earlier, near the grounds where the carnival had been set up for a couple of days. They were strangers, obvious transients traveling in a beat-up old Toyota, so the locals had easily picked them out and remembered both the woman and the girl later. Authorities were tipped off to the incident and the location of the body by an anonymous phone call. Workers from the carnival were detained for questioning briefly then released. The woman's purse was gone and the small amount of luggage left in the trunk of the abandoned car contained nothing but clothes and toiletries. They identified her by tracing the license plate; the name wasn't released. A suspect was in custody and based on the available evidence they were confident they'd caught the right man. No description of the girl was provided in the article but Sam didn't need one.

He set the paper aside as she slid back into her side of the booth and picked up her fork. Sam sipped his coffee and contemplated her from over the rim of his cup. At least she was eating now, even if it was only a few bites. Somehow he would have to draw her out and either find one of her relatives or help her get to a shelter. Wandering the roads alone was no place for a young girl. And if he was right about Alison being the girl in the article he actually needed to bring her to the police because she was a witness, and could identify both the man in custody and the woman.

His heart shattered at that thought. A witness to her mother's murder. She was right; he was late.

Leaping around in time for so many years had taught him that some things just couldn't be changed. Too many times he'd arrived after the fact; after someone died, after tragedy of some sort had occurred. He knew he wasn't there to stop those tragedies but to change something that happened in the aftermath. Understanding it didn't make it less painful though; the words 'too late' echoed in his head and he mourned what he couldn't fix every time.

She'd caught him staring at her again and she pulled her cap down as far as it would go, hiding from him. Sam smiled tenderly at the childishness of the gesture. Alison surreptitiously peered at him from beneath the bill and he brought his cup back to his lips to hide his smile so she wouldn't think he was laughing at her.

"You do remind me of someone, you know," he said, paused between gulps of coffee. "But I don't think we've met before…"

"We haven't," she said with absolute certainty.

"But I look familiar to you, too."

It was more than that though, he mused. She hadn't said too much to him, but there was something hidden between the lines of every word, and between every look she gave him, every gesture she made; like she knew who he was, as impossible as that seemed. Maybe she thought she knew and was mistaking him for someone else. Either way it was strange and unsettling.

Alison just shrugged and finished her toast.

"Did you have enough to eat? We can get something else..."

"No." She pushed the bill of her cap back up and looked directly at him again. "Thanks."

Mary glanced their way and Sam signaled for the check. He drank the last of his coffee and paid the bill then he walked outside with Alison, the folded newspaper tucked under his arm. They stood in front of the diner and stared at one another. Alison looked like she wanted to say something, he thought, but instead she clamped her mouth shut and averted her eyes. She made no move to leave him though, and he wondered if maybe she did want to talk to him – or to someone – about everything but was afraid or couldn't remember it all. He had the oddest sense that she _wanted_ him to stay with her, even as she fought with him.

"Where will you go now?" He held his hand up at her scowl. "I swear I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I don't know where your parents are and why you're not with them…and I'm not asking…but it's just not safe for you to be roaming around alone. Don't you realize that? And maybe I can help."

"Why do you have to be so nice?"

Both the question and the not quite suppressed hurt and rage in her voice surprised him. "You'd rather I was mean?"

She shifted from foot to foot, examined her sneakers, stabbed at the ground with her toe for several minutes before answering, "Maybe."

"Why?" he exclaimed, flummoxed.

"So, is this what you do?" she asked, her eyes remaining on her feet. "You just go around all over the place giving first aid and helping total strangers?"

"Yes. Will you answer my question now?"

"Which one?"

He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes but she was still looking down. "Either one would be a start."

"I'm going back to the carnival."

"You mean you want to go with them when they leave?"

"Yeah." She looked up finally and he shook his head.

"And do what? Work?"

Their eyes met and it occurred to Sam that she'd taken her mother's wallet. The article said the woman's purse was gone. She'd probably gone through whatever cash was in there already and needed more. Using an ATM was out of the question; the police knew the wallet was missing and had probably put an alert on the ATM card and any credit cards in the woman's name, in the event they were used. As soon as she tried to pay for anything with one, they would trace her.

Alison didn't say anything. She just began to walk into town and back in the direction of the carnival. Sam fell into step beside her.

"Alison, you're too young. They could get in trouble hiring you. It's great that you want to work but…"

"I just need to get to Junction City. That's where they're going next."

"And what, you're hoping they'll give you a lift?"

She quickened her pace.

Town consisted of just one main street lined with two and three-story buildings made of brick and stone, all stores and offices, and narrower streets intersecting it. In the center there was a small park with a manicured lawn, a few trees and benches, a trash can, and a monument made of brick with lettering that read 'Welcome to Ashville, Kansas, Population 190'.

He kept up effortlessly, refusing to let her evade him. "Or were you planning on sneaking into one of their trucks and getting there that way? Is that how you got here?"

"I made friends with them," she said with a nonchalant shrug.

Sam sighed. "Was it their party you went to last night? Because they didn't seem to care very much what happened to you then. Doesn't that bother you? Why would you want to even be around people who treat you like that?"

The look she cast his way was venomous. "Why is it any of your business?"

"Oh, boy," he groaned under his breath, rolling his eyes toward the sky.

He went with her into the park and took a seat beside her on one of the benches in the shade of an oak tree, setting the newspaper down between them. He'd left it folded with the page containing that article facing out and her gaze rested on it for a minute. Then she shifted uneasily and turned away.

"Alison." He wanted to just come out and tell her he knew she was the girl they were searching for, that she needed to go back, that maybe they needed her as a witness. That she should be there out of respect for her mother instead of running away and didn't she want to be there?

She reached up and ran the back of her hand across her forehead.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

"Yes," she muttered.

But she looked exhausted, distressed and too vulnerable. He decided that pushing her to talk about anything wasn't a good idea now and kept the focus on her physical health.

"Will you let me take your pulse so I can make sure?"

With a grimace she stuck out her arm and allowed him to take it. Pleased with the rate and strength he released her wrist. Then he checked her eyes and throat.

"We can rest here in town for a while." It wasn't noon yet but it was already blisteringly hot, without the slightest hint of a breeze, the too-bright sun casting a glare that bleached the color out of everything. Even in the shade of the oak Sam felt sun-dazed and sleepy, but he sat at the edge of the bench, not giving in to his own weariness. "The carnival isn't leaving until late tonight. So you don't have to rush back out there. Okay?"

Alison nodded and pulled her water bottle out of her knapsack.

"I think you'd be better off…" He trailed off at her glance and held up his hands in surrender again. "Okay, okay. No lecture." He inclined his head, indicating the scrape on her shin and her skinned knees. "Do you have any first aid cream or ointment in your pack? It would be a good idea to put some on those."

She took a few gulps of water then lowered the bottle. "I've got Band-Aids."

He thought she might refuse to come with him when he suggested they go to the store but she didn't.

Two men stood across the way talking; Alison glanced at them askance, edging closer to Sam and keeping him between her and their line of sight as they left the park.

"Were they at the party?" he asked sotto voce; she didn't answer.

The men started walking in the same direction they were going. Sam sensed her apprehension and lightly dropped a protective arm around her shoulders. Despite the unfathomable resentment she seemed to harbor, he had no doubt Alison knew she was safe with him and he was right. After the initial shock at the contact her shoulders relaxed slightly and she settled into his touch, slipping out from beneath his arm only after they were inside the store and the men had continued past it.

Sam bought a bottle of water for himself, alcohol pads, antibiotic ointment, gauze and tape, and they returned to the park so he could tend to her scrapes and cuts. Those men were long gone and she seemed calmer as she sat down on the same bench. He knelt on the grass before her, cleaning her wounds then applying the ointment and covering them with gauze and tape. Then he handed her the tube of ointment and other supplies to keep in her pack and rose. He tossed the wrappers into the trash, wiped his hands on his jeans and took a seat beside her again.

"Do you mind if I ask what's in Junction City? Why do you need to get there?"

"Greyhound."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere. As long as it's out of Kansas. But I need to get to Topeka to do that. If I can get to Junction City I can get to Topeka and then anywhere from there." With a challenge in her eyes she taunted, "_You_ can't help me get there, can you?"

He had to fight the impulse to tell her what a brat she was. But she'd opened the door a crack for him and Topeka would definitely have youth shelters. Maybe if he could get her to really trust him she would go willingly, maybe he could even convince her to talk to the police about what happened...

"I'll help you however I can," he said.

III

While they sat in the park they were approached by a heavyset woman named Lu Anne who, with her husband Jack, ran the bar in town. She was fortyish, attractive and well put-together, her floral print skirt, pale pink top and beige leather sandals casual but stylish, her shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. She assumed Alison was his daughter and invited them to sit inside.

"I know what it's like to be on the road," she said. "Lots of times you can't find a place to just clean up or rest. It's exhausting. The bar is air conditioned and you can cool off, use the restrooms. It's still hot out today, even if it's not hitting a hundred for a change."

Sam could only imagine how ragged they must have appeared to her, the two of them loitering in the park all dusty and sweaty, Alison with her knapsack and bandaged up legs and him…he'd forgotten he had ripped a strip off the bottom of his shirt to help her clean up during the night and he hastily tucked it into his pants to hide the frayed edge.

A tan leather tote was slung over Lu Anne's shoulder and she carried a brown bag full of groceries in her arms, which Sam offered to carry. He took the sack from her, tossing in his water bottle and the newspaper, and they left the park. The bar was two blocks away and around the corner.

It was dim and cool inside, the paneled walls and furniture made of the darkest cherry wood. Lu Anne filled two glasses with ice water and set them down on the bar in front of them, then she disappeared somewhere in the back. Sam and Alison drank their water and unabashedly considered one another in the mirror. He was struck by the way her nose wrinkled and her brow creased when she frowned, so reminiscent of someone…he still couldn't bring the picture clearly into focus, and when he struggled to recall it his mind folded in on itself and wandered far away.

Lu Anne was standing behind the bar again refilling his glass when he drifted back to awareness, and Sam realized with a start that while he'd been daydreaming Alison had gone off somewhere.

"She went to wash up." She set his glass on the bar. "I take it you came here for the carnival?"

"No. I didn't even know about it."

He began to explain that they were stranded without a car, and that they were trying to get to Junction City so they could catch a bus to Topeka or Kansas City.

There was no car rental in a small place like Ashville or anywhere near it for that matter, and no public transportation. Other than walking, the only way they would get anywhere was with a lift. The carnival was one option but Sam really didn't want Alison near the people working there nor did he want to meet them; he was sure he wouldn't be able to control his temper if he did. He was outraged at the callousness they'd displayed not only allowing this child to drink at all with them, and maybe take drugs too, but then letting her go off alone at her peril; to die if he hadn't come along.

"You got a lift here?" she asked.

He nodded and took a drink of water. Alison returned and quietly took her seat again, dropping her knapsack on the empty stool beside her. She'd taken the baseball cap off and stowed it in her pack, her hair was hanging loose now, damp and smelling of shampoo.

"Are you from around here originally?" he asked Lu Anne. After all the leaping around to different times and places, meeting so many people, he'd become fairly adept at recognizing accents but he couldn't pin hers down. She spoke with the slightest hint of a drawl sometimes, a twang at others, but she didn't quite sound either Southern or Midwestern.

"I'm from West Virginia originally but we moved to California when I was five. I've lived all over the place, even in Prague for a while. It's kind of a long, boring story how I ended up here in this little oasis though." She laughed and unfolded the road map in her hands, spreading it out on the bar between them and tracing one of the lines with her finger. "Now, I-70 is nearby but you can take local roads, too. Lots of tourists do that instead of taking the Interstate to cross Kansas. It's more scenic, it's got places to visit along the way and campgrounds, especially along this part of the route here." She tapped the spot. "I'll ask around later when folks come in. I know there's at least one person who'll be going your way and may be willing to give you a lift part of the way. Maybe I can even get you a ride all the way to Topeka."

"That would be great."

"I have some things to do before we open up this afternoon but you can both stay here as long as you need to."

"Thank you."

"What was living in Prague like?" Alison asked her.

It was the first time Sam had seen her show curiosity in anything, and he was pleasantly surprised. He left the two of them talking while he went to the men's room, taking his time, splashing cold water on his face and neck, washing off the grime and sweat. By the time he emerged the conversation about Prague was over. Alison was telling Lu Anne that her mother had left them a long time ago, right after she was born, that she never even knew her mother and that _he_ had been raising her alone. He supposed she wanted to keep up the illusion that he was her father. But the tales she told as he rejoined them, about her mother, about things that had happened on the road, were not to be believed.

Lu Anne was listening attentively, as incredulous as Sam felt. Alison's talent for making up outrageous stories surpassed even Al's. Once more he wondered if she was a relative of his. It wouldn't surprise him given how many times he'd encountered Al or someone connected to him on his recent leaps. But when he searched Alison's visage for a resemblance to Al or Beth Calavicci he found none.

"What are you doing?" he asked when Lu Anne left them to themselves, keeping his voice down even though she was out of the room. "Why are you making up stories?"

"It's half true," Alison said coolly. "That's the key to telling a good story. Putting enough truth in so you're believable. I'm an excellent storyteller."

He shook his head gravely and said, "No, you're a prevaricator and you should stop it. Lying is a bad habit and it'll get you in trouble someday."

"I'm tired," she grumbled.

"Yeah, so am I," he replied, irritated.

They regarded each other in stony silence.

"You told Lu Anne your mother was a scientist. Is that true? What was her specialty? Physics, chemistry? Where did she work?"

"For the last few years she was waiting tables. When she managed to have a job," she said with disdain.

"How did you survive when she didn't?"

"We got help from men a lot of the time. Men always like younger women and she was already too old for a lot of them. But I wasn't," she said casually.

Sam blinked, flabbergasted, sorry he'd asked and wanting to shake her and scold her. She was doing the same thing to him as she did to Lu Anne, mixing truth with lies, trying to shock him and in a bizarre way get attention. So he asked a question that he guessed correctly would press a button and throw her off balance.

"This is all since your mother sold the house and the piano, isn't it?"

The pain his remark caused was clear in her face and he felt a twinge of regret.

"Last night you told me how much having a piano to play meant to you…"

"Yeah, well, I was lying when I said all those things…"

"No," he countered gently. "I think those were some of the most truthful things you've said since I've known you."

"You _don't_ know me. I just said all that so you'd shut up and stop asking…"

"Hey!" It came out louder and harsher than he'd intended, enough to make her jump. He lowered his voice. "Cut that out, okay? I'm an adult and you're a kid. So stop being rude and talking to me that way. I'm tired of it. Didn't anyone ever teach you to respect your elders?"

Alison sulked and started kicking the side of the bar. He laid a firm hand on her forearm.

"Please don't do that."

She pouted in the direction of her water glass but obliged him, stilling her leg.

"Thank you." He gave her arm a comforting rub then removed his hand. "You know, I think you're really not as much of a brat as you're trying so hard to convince me you are."

"Yes I am," she argued grumpily.

He chuckled. "So, did you make that up about your mom?"

"No." She looked up, meeting his eye, and with earnestness said, "She really was a scientist. But she waited tables in college and once we left home…our real home…she started doing that again…trying to…"

"Your real home," he murmured. "You never told me where that was."

"It doesn't matter. I can't ever go back there."

A pang of melancholy settled in his chest and he took a drink of water to soothe his own tightening throat. Although this girl's situation was different from his, he understood too well how she felt. He left the matter of where she was originally from alone but continued to probe her about everything else, genuinely curious and wishing to help her if he could, if she would let him.

"Where did you go when you left?"

"Oakland. We stayed there for almost two years. That's the longest we ever stayed anywhere. She tried to work a job in her field around there. But it didn't work out."

Every word she uttered was a quiet lament.

"How old were you then? I mean when you went to Oakland…"

"Seven. After Uncle Al died she said we had to leave home. We didn't go right away…but eventually…and then my aunt died, too."

Sadness surged through him at the words 'after Uncle Al died'. He pushed the thoughts that accompanied the feeling away.

"And you've just been moving all around since then? What about school?"

"My mom enrolled me in public school wherever we went." She ran her finger along the rim of her glass, picked it up and swished the leftover water around, set it down again. "She just wouldn't stay any place. She was too unhappy."

She had been, he observed, and still was, referring to her mother in the past tense.

As for her father, she'd made no mention of him at all and Sam assumed he was out of the picture and probably had been for a long time. When she told Lu Anne about her mother leaving so long ago, that she never even knew her mother, she was actually talking about her father.

"It must have been hard for you too, always having to start again in a new school with new teachers, new kids, having to start over making new friends all the time."

"I always stayed for the first day then after that I showed up in the morning and cut the rest of the day." She looked at him and shrugged. "No one ever noticed I wasn't there."

Sam regarded her with deep sympathy. Being invisible to everybody had to have hurt her, even if it did allow her to get away with things; and that big chip on her shoulder no doubt made it more difficult for her to make friends when she got to new places.

Alison fidgeted uncomfortably under his gaze and shifted her eyes away.

"Not even one of your teachers noticed you were gone?"

"They were all dimwits."

He noted the thinly disguised sadness in her voice and turned the conversation to something else.

"Who taught you so much about auto mechanics?" Although so much of what Alison told Lu Anne about 'their' adventures on the road was exaggerated or straight fiction, her explanation about the car was not. She'd convincingly and accurately described in detail a car that had some salvageable parts but was too old and broken down to repair without shelling out an exorbitant amount of money. "You really seem to know your stuff."

"My mom and I did a lot of driving long distances. We had to figure it out as we went." She leaned over, folding her arms on the bar and pillowing her head on them, her hair spilling forward to obscure her face. "I'm really tired. I don't want to talk anymore."

"Okay." He touched her shoulder gently. "Get some rest. Lu Anne said we can stay here as long as we need to."

IV

Sam didn't remember dozing off. He only realized upon waking that he'd been asleep, his elbow propped up on the bar, his chin in his hand. Beside him Alison was still bent over the bar, her face buried in her folded arms. He raised his head, reached back to rub his neck, yawned and stretched.

He'd been wondering what Alison was going to do when she got to the Greyhound depot in Junction City and he thought about it again now. She didn't even have enough money for breakfast. How was she going to buy a bus ticket anywhere?

Another fib, he concluded grimly.

Feeling the need to move he stood up. The wood floor creaked quietly under his feet as he walked around the perimeter of the bar, studying the details of the place. When they first came inside they were stepping out of the bright sunlight, eyes needing to adjust to the sudden darkness. Cooling off and cleaning up were foremost on his mind, aside from his concerns about Alison, and he hadn't really paid attention to the décor or much else, other than noticing the large TV screen mounted up high in a corner where people would have a vantage point from wherever they sat. Now he saw all the hats. There were hats everywhere; hanging on the walls, sitting on shelves between bottles of whiskey and scotch, strung on hooks descending from the ceiling, displayed in the front windows. Hats of all kind, in all colors, made of felt, wool, leather, straw; bowlers, fedoras, toques, baseball caps, a green and yellow 'John Deere' cap, a black top hat, a 1920s-style flapper hat.

It was an interesting choice for a theme and he turned toward the window. He hadn't noticed the name of the bar upon entering either and now he looked for it. From inside he had to read backwards but it was easy enough to decipher the words in the window. The Mad Hatter.

Smiling in amusement he turned back and examined the black and silver beaded flapper hat on the wall before him.

Muffled digital music suddenly sounded from the direction of Alison's knapsack, a piano and percussion salsa riff on repeat. He turned and walked back to the bar. The music had stopped by the time she'd lifted her head, pulled the pack onto her lap and finished digging through it. She pulled out a red cell phone and pressed a button on it. Sam saw her face crumple and sat down beside her again. Alison laid the phone on the bar and frowned at him.

"Do you want privacy while you call them back?"

She shook her head. He searched for something neutral to say.

"Are you hungry for lunch yet? You didn't eat much at breakfast."

"Yes."

"Okay. Let me go find Lu Anne and tell her we're leaving for a little while."

Twenty minutes later they sat facing each other cross-legged on the same park bench, a large brown bag laid flat between them, packages of bread and lunch meat, a small plastic tray with leaves of lettuce spread out on top. Sam had asked for a double-bag and the second one was behind him, filled with fruit, peanut butter and other extra snacks he'd bought so Alison would have food for later. Grocery shopping was cheaper than eating out and the food could be spread out over several meals.

"Why do we have to sit out here?" she asked, leaning forward and cutting the tomato into slices with the Swiss army knife she'd been carrying around in her pack.

"Well, I figured we shouldn't impose too much on Lu Anne by eating in her place and messing it up. And this way we can talk." He took some turkey breast for his sandwich and pushed the open package toward her.

Alison concentrated on making her sandwich.

"What if I don't want to talk?" she asked after a while.

Sam swallowed a bite of his turkey, lettuce and tomato. "I won't force you. But you haven't been honest with me, and if I'm helping you out I think I have a right to know the truth, don't you?"

He waited for her to say something. She furtively peeked up at him for a moment, and then began to eat.

"I already know the carnival is going to Junction City," she finally said between bites. She set her sandwich down on her napkin, opened her bottle of lemonade and sipped from it. "Why should I wait for you and Lu Anne to…?"

"You don't have money for a bus ticket." He let those words and the transparency of her lie sink in for a minute. "So I don't see how you're planning to catch a Greyhound anywhere. I don't think they allow anyone on without a ticket."

She lowered the bottle, her face downcast. "I need to get out of here."

"Alison…" he trailed off, trying to figure out the right approach. "I don't know what happened…but running away isn't the answer. It just makes things worse." He waited for a reaction of some sort, aware of how trite his words sounded and wishing he'd come up with something more helpful. "You're hoping they'll just let you tag along or work." She inclined her head and he nodded in understanding. "I thought so. But they can't. And anyway they're the last people you need to be around…"

"How come you care so much about people you don't know?" she interrupted.

"Trying to change the subject again?"

"Didn't you ever want a family?"

Sam drew in a long breath, giving up battling her on this for now. "Yes, I did," he answered quietly. "But my lifestyle never allowed for it. I don't ever stay in one place for very long."

She scrutinized him through narrowed eyes.

"Alison…"

"Don't you get lonely?"

"Sometimes," he replied after a pause. "Alison…"

"Did you see all the hats in Lu Anne's place?" she asked and he stifled an exasperated groan. "It's called The Mad Hatter."

"Yeah, I saw them. It's a creative idea."

"She has a real flapper hat...it's called a cloche."

He smiled in spite of himself. "Do you have a particular interest in the 1920s?"

"Not particularly."

"1920s fashion?"

"No."

The digital music started up again from inside her pack, but she made no move to retrieve the phone.

"It's probably the same person calling you."

Alison didn't say anything and continued to ignore the ring. They ate the rest of their lunch in silence, surrounded by the buzz of insects, the sounds of passing cars and pickup trucks, the loud clunking from one car with a bad muffler. She wiped the Swiss army knife on the edge of the paper bag that was serving as their tablecloth, closed it and put it back in her pack. Sam tied the loaf of bread closed and placed it in the bag behind him with the other food.

"If Lu Anne doesn't find us a ride by seven tonight I'm going back out there," she announced as they cleaned up together. "You don't have to come. I'll walk or hitch, whatever."

He didn't even try to mask his frustration with her. "I don't understand why you care so little about what happens to you."

Sighing deeply he hurled the last of the trash into the garbage can and headed out of the park carrying the grocery bag in one hand. He'd walked about ten feet when he realized she wasn't walking with him and whirled around. She'd gone to sit on the bench again. Her knapsack was in her lap and she was leaning forward, hugging it to her body; even at this distance he could see how distraught she was. The sight tore at his heart and he was back at her side in an instant. He rested a gentle hand on her arm.

"I'm sorry."

So far he'd deliberately avoided directly asking her about things like the newspaper article, the bruises on her neck and arms, or the two men she'd been afraid of earlier. Maybe it was time.

"What is it?"

Sobs wracked her body and he slipped his arm around her shoulders. When she didn't flinch or pull away he brought his other arm around, gathering her into an embrace.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

She shook her head but she allowed him to hold her. Sam rubbed her back, listening as her pain and anger gushed out and trying to soothe her. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was that he came so late, that he wasn't in time to save her mother, that he wasn't in time to stop whatever had happened to her.

"I can't stay here." She spoke into his shoulder, her voice muffled by his shirt and her tears.

"Okay. But why is it so urgent? I realize there isn't much here…"

Her crying grew more urgent and insistent, and he held her tighter.

"Shhh, okay. It's okay. I'm going to help you," he assured her. "You asked me, and I will…but…you've been fighting with me every step of the way and that has to stop, okay?" He felt her nod. "If Lu Anne hasn't found us a lift by ten o'clock tonight we'll go out there and try to leave with the carnival. It shuts down at eleven but then they'll have to pack up. So that should be plenty of time for us to catch them. But I'd rather find some other way, and I won't leave you by yourself. You're still too young to take care of yourself alone and you have no money. When we get to Topeka I'll bring you to a shelter…or we can contact one of your relatives…maybe the one who's been trying to reach you." He paused. "It is a relative…"

"My aunt," she answered finally, raising her head and brushing away her tears. He kept a supportive hand on her shoulder as she shifted and sat up.

"What's her name?"

"Kate."

"Don't you like your Aunt Kate?"

"She was always very kind to me. But I haven't seen her in a really long time. My mother didn't stay in touch with anyone."

"Your mom just took you and kept running, huh?"

Alison looked at him through moist eyes, her chin quivering. "She didn't want to be the one waiting and wondering anymore."

Again there was something in those words and her expression that bordered on familiarity, even blame, and it startled him.

"I can see why you might feel strange talking to your aunt again after so long…" he said, recovering his train of thought after a minute, "but you've got her name and number programmed into your phone so…"

"No, it showed up and I recognized the area code. I don't even know how she got this number."

"Well, she must know something's wrong and she's looking for you. How many days has she been trying to call you?"

Alison averted her gaze. More tears flowed down her cheeks.

"Alison, I know how much you're hurting and I'm truly sorry for it. But you're hurting at least one other person too. Don't you think it's cruel to leave your aunt hanging this way? Someone who you said was always very kind to you? She's worried about you, with good reason, and with you not picking up the phone she's probably imagining the worst right now."

"Probably," she admitted, head bowed.

"Well? Is that what you want?"

"No."

They sat quietly and she slowly calmed down. He withdrew one of the napkins from the grocery bag and handed it to her. She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

"What about calling your aunt back?"

"I will."

"Please don't wait too long."

Alison nodded and he didn't push it.

"How about we go back inside where it's cool now? Maybe Lu Anne's already made contact with someone who's driving our way."

"I don't want to walk yet."

With a sinking feeling Sam noted her posture, the way her body was subtly curled in as if she wanted to make herself as small and invisible as possible. She needed far more help than he was capable of giving.

"Okay," he said, keeping his tone as light as possible and smiling kindly. "We can wait until you're ready to go."

For a long time they sat there, saying nothing. Now and then tears streamed from her eyes again, and he kept a comforting arm around her shoulders. When the music of another incoming call started playing on her cell phone he pleaded with her to answer it. She looked at the number flashing then at him, let the riff play two more times and took the call.

V

The afternoon was waning by the time they finally left the park bench and walked back to The Mad Hatter. A crowd had already arrived, mostly men. They talked and laughed loudly, and Alison flinched the moment they stepped inside and the noise accosted them. Understanding how vulnerable she was feeling, Sam gently steered her to a small table in the corner, furthest away from the fray.

Alison's call with her aunt had been a tearful one. When it ended it took Sam a good fifteen minutes of soothing her until she stopped crying, then another half hour just sitting before she finally settled down enough to walk back to Lu Anne's place. He was completely worn out.

He still didn't know the details of what happened – he'd walked away during the call to give her privacy, though he kept her in sight – and he doubted she'd ever share them with him. It didn't matter really. He could piece together that a vulnerable woman and her even more vulnerable young daughter were victimized by a brutal stranger while traveling on their own. Somehow Alison alone miraculously got away with her life, traumatized but still alive.

Maybe she hadn't explained anything to her aunt either. But at least they'd made contact and there was some sort of plan being formulated. According to Alison, her aunt was calling a close friend who lived somewhere between Topeka and Kansas City, to ask her to meet her and stay with her until she could book a flight.

Sam was going to leave her at the table while he went to the bar to order their drinks, but she got up and trotted after him, too afraid to be left alone. Lu Anne greeted them with a warm smile and he ordered two Cokes. He would have preferred a beer but decided it was probably better to refrain from drinking anything alcoholic while he was looking after Alison.

"I've got someone willing to give you a ride but there's a catch," Lu Anne said as she set the drinks on the bar. "She's not leaving here until tomorrow morning, late. But she can take you all the way to Topeka, even Kansas City if you want to go that far."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Alison look at him and nod. Her aunt's friend lived closer to Kansas City than to Topeka. But Sam shook his head doubtfully.

"We don't have a place to stay tonight. I don't think anyone would appreciate us sprawling out on the benches in the park."

"I've got room upstairs. I can't get away before midnight so you'll have to wait down here until then, but at least you'll have a place to rest. Anyway, she'll be happy to have the extra company along for the drive. I'll introduce you later."

She walked away to take someone else's drink order and Sam stared after her for a long moment. He wasn't a cynical person by nature, but the extent to which Lu Anne had immediately gone out of her way for them and continued to do so, and now a place to stay and a ride directly to where they needed to go literally falling in their lap – it was all too good to be true. But there was nothing sinister in it, as far as he could sense, and his instincts were usually right. And the sooner he could get Alison reunited with her aunt – or in the care of _anybody_ besides him – the better. If Lu Anne's contact could take them all the way to Kansas City in one trip it would make things that much easier.

They carried their drinks back to the table and sat quietly for a while, sipping their sodas and staring at the television screen up in the corner. Lu Anne had the news playing with the sound off, but large letters across the bottom of the screen informed them that the temperature would climb back up to one hundred degrees the next day. He'd apparently leaped in on a day when it had dipped to ninety-seven after four or five straight days of three-digit highs.

Sam shifted his attention back to Lu Anne, watching her work. Earlier in the park she had told him that she ran the bar with her husband Jack, but all evening she tended the bar and the tables alone. Food orders were made at the bar as well and then Lu Anne called them into the kitchen.

"Jack must be the cook," he murmured, more to himself than to Alison.

"Lailah's the cook," she corrected him.

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Yeah? How'd you know that?"

"Lu Anne told me before. She has a couple of people working in back and helping her with stuff, but she works the bar alone. I don't know if there is a Jack. Maybe she made him up."

"Huh?" He shook his head. She really was a strange young girl. "Why would she do something like that?"

"Lots of reasons. A lot of times my mom lied and said that a man was with us, but he was somewhere else or meeting us later or something. It's protection. If you make a guy think there's another man around he'll go away and leave you alone. Sometimes," she added after a long pause, her face darkening.

He asked her about her earlier conversation with Lu Anne, about Prague and if it was a place she wanted to visit someday, nudging the conversation toward a lighter topic to ease her brooding and keep her spirits up. Alison really wasn't so bad when she wasn't being snotty and fighting with him. When it came down to it she was probably a good kid. She was intelligent and had interesting things to say. In some ways she reminded him of his little sister.

They found out later that Lailah the cook was also their ride. When she emerged from the kitchen at around midnight she came over to their table with Lu Anne. She was in her mid-thirties, Sam estimated, tall and slim, dressed casually in denim capris, a black tunic and leather sandals. Her light grey eyes were striking in contrast to her bronzed skin and black hair. A large clip held her hair back and up off her neck.

"Lailah Kalb," Lu Anne said. "This is Sam Beckett and his daughter Alison."

Sam started at the mention of his last name; he no longer disclosed it to anyone unless it was an extraordinary situation, like when he met Al on one of his leaps. He'd only told Lu Anne his first name.

"Good to meet you," Lailah said, pumping his hand and then Alison's. "You need to go to Topeka?"

"Or Kansas City," he replied, regaining his composure, "if you're going that far."

"I am. I'll be leaving pretty late in the morning. Sorry you have to wait. Where are you staying tonight?"

"They'll be here," Lu Anne answered. "I'm letting them stay in the apartment upstairs. Do you mind keeping an eye on things while I get them settled?"

"Not at all."

Lailah told them she'd pick them up there at around eleven, eleven-thirty the next morning then she went and took her place behind the bar. Lu Anne motioned for them to follow her.

"I used to live above the bar," she said, leading them to the back. They went along a hall, past the restrooms and through a doorway at the end, then turned a hard right and climbed a narrow carpeted staircase. "I've moved…somewhere else…but decided to keep the place for occasions like this. Comes in handy when someone can't make it all the way home, too. It's getting them up these stairs that's the trick though. One time I had to carry a guy up here…over my shoulder…in a fireman's carry. And he wasn't small. I didn't think I'd make it but I did. I was pretty proud of myself." The keys on the ring in her hand jangled lightly as she inserted the correct one in the lock and unbolted the door. "I kept the electricity on but never connected a land line, so there's no phone. But there's central air conditioning. I'll stay here with you tonight, in case you need anything. I've got two bedrooms and a couch in the living room. One of you can take the other bedroom and one of you can stay on the couch."

The main room of the apartment was large and only sparsely furnished. There was a wide window and dull beige carpeting covered the floor from wall to wall. It didn't feel at all like a home; it was as if Lu Anne had moved in for only a month or so, never settled in then just left the place not even half-furnished. There was no lamp in the room, just a light fixture overhead. A couch, a television on a stand and a bookcase with a couple of books but mostly empty space on each shelf made up the entire compliment of furniture in the living room. Alison immediately went over to the shelves and examined the titles.

Lu Anne showed Sam where the kitchen and the bathroom were located. She opened the cabinet over the bathroom sink.

"You're in luck." She held up a toothbrush, still in its unopened package, and giving him an enigmatic smile she set it on the narrow ledge over the sink. "There's a tube of toothpaste in the cabinet."

She led him to the extra bedroom, which had the same beige carpeting as the rest of the apartment. A bare mattress sat on the floor with no box spring, some empty red milk crates were stacked up along one wall and a pair of old skis rested upright against another wall in the corner; the room contained nothing else.

"How did you know my last name anyway?" Sam asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. "I don't remember telling you…"

"Your daughter told me."

"My…?" he began, stunned.

After a beat he caught himself and quickly recovered. If Lu Anne noticed his reaction she didn't show it. She breezed past him and back out into the hall, beckoning him to follow her over to another door. It was a closet and she took bedding and towels down from the shelves and piled half of it into his arms. There was one more door at the end of the hall, her bedroom obviously.

She dropped one of the pillows and a set of linens on top of the mattress in the extra bedroom, then she led him back out to the living room. He set the bedding he was carrying down on the couch.

"I'm downstairs if you need anything. I'll talk to you later if I get back before you turn in. Otherwise I'll see you in the morning," she said, then bid them goodnight and left, shutting the door behind her.

Sam turned to Alison, who had plunked herself down on the couch and was rummaging through her knapsack. He took a seat beside her.

"Your name is Beckett?"

Alison's movements ceased momentarily but she didn't look up. "I gave Lu Anne your name."

She went back to riffling through her bag, self-consciously now.

"How did you know my name?"

After another few moments of digging through the pack she finally said, "You told me."

"No, I didn't. I only told you my name is Sam." She peered inside her bag and said nothing. He stared hard at her but she still wouldn't look up. "How could you know?"

"I don't know," she muttered. She pulled out her cell phone, still not looking at him. "I have to call my aunt and let her know I'm going to Kansas City not Topeka."

"Isn't it too late?"

"It's earlier where she is."

Sam waited while she made her phone call, which was considerably shorter and much easier this time. She told her aunt she had a ride to Kansas City and that they would be there the next afternoon.

"Well?" he persisted when she hung up.

"Wait, I have to add this…" she said distractedly, punching several buttons on the phone.

"Alison…"

She tossed it back into her pack in a huff. "My aunt gave me her friend's number so I can call her. I had to program it in."

"You're done now?"

"Yes."

He pinned her with his eyes but she averted her face then stood up, dropped her knapsack on the floor and crossed over to the window.

"What a weird place," she said irritably. "I can't wait to get out of here."

Sam rose and joined her at the window, refusing to be put off. In the bright moonlight he could see the backs of the buildings that lined the street running parallel to the bar. He turned to face into the room, leaned back against the sill with his arms folded and tilted his head toward her, trying to catch her eye once more.

"Alison…"

"I saw it on your license."

"My license?"

"Yeah. I took your wallet while you were asleep before."

"What?" His hand flew toward his pocket then he caught himself. He glowered at her. "No you didn't. I had it when I paid for lunch."

She was still focused on something outside – or pretending to be – and wouldn't look at him when she answered. "I put it back before you woke up. I didn't take any money. I just wanted to see if I could do it."

His shoulders sagged. He didn't have the energy to deal with this anymore.

"I don't understand what you gain from making up a story like that."

But he did understand actually. She was doing it to deflect him.

"Look, it's late and I'm tired. I'm going to bed," he said wearily. He walked away, leaving her standing at the window, and began to spread the sheet over the couch. "I'll sleep out here on the couch and you can have the bedroom."

A minute later, as he was slipping a pillow case on the pillow, the television went on behind him and he whirled around to see Alison standing in front of it. He flung the pillow onto the couch and strode over to her.

It took an effort to keep his temper in check. Before he spoke he reminded himself how much this girl had been through and that she was asking for attention and help in the only way she knew how. "Didn't we agree you wouldn't fight with me anymore? Or lie?" he said in an even voice.

"I'm not fighting." She kept her back to him but he could hear the pout in her voice.

He sighed, defeated. "Alison, I'm exhausted and out of patience. So I'm going to call it a night. Do you want to stay out here so you can watch T.V. or do you want…?"

"Time," she said suddenly.

"What?"

"You were on the cover." She still wouldn't face him but she turned off the television.

"_Time_…you…_Time_ Magazine? That issue is from a long time ago, before you were born. How did you come to see it?"

"I spent a lot of time in libraries."

"Looking at thirty-year-old magazines?"

She shrugged and finally turned to him with a bored expression. "I ran out of things to read."

He frowned dubiously at her then scrubbed a hand over his face. "I don't know whether to believe you or not anymore. I can't believe you would remember it…"

"I remember everything I read," she bragged.

Sam listened astonished as she went on to describe the article in full detail.

"Do you have a photographic memory, Alison?"

"I don't know."

"Why didn't you just tell me before?"

"That I have a photographic memory?"

He glared at her impatiently. "That you knew me from the magazine."

She looked away again. "I didn't think it mattered."

Sam fell silent and studied her thoughtfully. She wasn't making it up. But it still didn't explain why he also somehow recognized her.

"Well, it's been a long day for both of us," he finally said kindly. "You should get some rest too. Do you want to sleep out here on the couch or in the bedroom? You get first choice."

"The couch."

He bid her goodnight and went to get ready for bed. When he finally stretched out on the mattress ten minutes later he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

It was still the middle of the night when Sam woke abruptly, not sure if he'd been dreaming or if he'd actually been hearing the sound of muffled voices and moans through the bedroom door. He went out to check and found the apartment empty. Alison wasn't in the living room and Lu Anne wasn't in the other bedroom. A sense of alarm surged through him until he caught sight of the patch of light purple peeping out from behind the couch. Alison's knapsack was still on the living room floor.

Something drew him to the window. He opened it quietly and peered down into the yard. Lu Anne and Alison were sitting on the grass together in the moonlight, engrossed in a serious conversation. Alison was crying – he knew even without seeing or hearing – and Lu Anne had a comforting arm around her shoulders. Relief filled him as he watched them. Maybe Lu Anne could be more helpful to her, and there was no doubt Alison would have an easier time confiding in her about certain things than in him or any man.

Sam closed the window and returned to the bedroom. He slept through the night this time.

VI

It quickly became clear as they sat together at the kitchen table the next morning that Alison and Lu Anne had bonded. More than that, they seemed to share some deep secret now, if the discreet looks and smiles they exchanged were anything to go by. It made Sam uneasy for a reason he couldn't rationally explain; as if somehow it involved him without his knowing, which seemed ridiculous. He shook the notion off after a minute.

At ten-thirty Lailah called at the apartment with her five-year-old daughter Aliya in tow and the two of them joined them for a breakfast of peanut butter and banana sandwiches prepared from the food stuff Sam had bought the previous day. Lu Anne brought up a carton of orange juice from downstairs while Lailah made coffee.

When they'd finished Lu Anne insisted that she would clean everything up herself so they could get on the road. She walked them downstairs and out to Lailah's white four-door Nissan. They said their goodbyes and he thanked her for all the help she'd given them. Alison hurried after Lu Anne when she turned to go. Sam smiled fondly as he watched her throw her arms around her and they shared a meaningful embrace.

The trip to Kansas City was long but mostly quiet and uneventful. Now that Alison had gotten whatever she needed to off her chest with Lu Anne she was much more pleasant and easier for him to deal with. Or maybe it was simply that they weren't alone for most of the day. Lailah had to stop several times for Aliya, and they pulled off the highway into a town that was somewhere near the halfway mark to have lunch. They reached the city by five and Lailah left them off at a luxury hotel in the downtown area, where Aunt Kate's friend Sarah had told Alison she would meet her.

They sat together on one of the plush couches in the fancy lobby and Alison fidgeted nervously. She had no idea what Sarah looked like. She said Sarah would find her; she knew to look for a girl wearing a red Hoosiers cap and holding a purple knapsack. Sam knew she was anxious about living in a new place too, with an aunt that she hadn't seen for many years. Not to mention that her Aunt Kate probably knew what happened to her mother and may have been planning to make her talk to the police. He wanted to reassure her that everything would be okay but his own mood had sunk too low and he knew the words would just sound empty.

A sense of deep dissatisfaction weighed on him. Today had gone by so quickly. He regretted how abruptly it was all ending, even if he had been at his wits' end with Alison not even twenty-four hours ago. The formality and distance, even the calm between them was disconcerting, almost…anti-climactic…after yesterday's intensity and constant emotional sparring. It ate at him that he still didn't know why she was so achingly familiar too; and he felt a longing to stay with her so he could dig further and discover the answers he was seeking.

She would be okay. He knew it in his gut. Her aunt would care for her and she would be okay now. Yet so much about this leap felt disturbingly unresolved and he knew it would haunt him forever.

Alison must have felt him staring at her again. She turned quietly and met his eye, her face inscrutable, and he wondered if the shift between them as well as the specter of their imminent parting bothered her also. He had a feeling it did.

"Do you know where you're going next?" she asked suddenly.

"Wherever I'm needed."

"How do you know where that is?"

"It's difficult to explain."

An expression of profound sadness settled over her features and he felt a pang of remorse at his inability to help her further and ease her pain. But there was too much to do and so much he didn't know about her, and it would take too long to figure it all out. She needed to be with someone who knew her already, someone who was family. He'd saved her life and gotten her here safely; he'd done all he could and he had to be satisfied with that.

"Alison?"

The woman approaching them was in her late fifties, early sixties, neatly dressed in a beige linen pantsuit, her blonde hair worn short. Sam and Alison both stood up to meet her and Alison introduced him by his first name only.

"Your Aunt Katie is flying out tonight and she'll be here tomorrow afternoon. She booked a suite for us. We can check in now." Sarah turned to Sam. "Are you staying here?"

"No, I need to get moving. I just wanted to make sure Alison was safe."

"Well…thank you. Katie was really frantic about her. Alison told her that she'd met someone who was helping her but…she was still worried of course."

They shook hands then Sam turned to Alison. Her discomfort was obvious and she kept herself hidden from him. The bill of her cap was pulled all the way down again and she peeked out at him from beneath it. He was going to hold out his hand but he realized the handshake wouldn't be welcome so he just nodded to her. "Take care of yourself, Alison, okay?"

"Bye," she said quickly and turned to follow Sarah. Sarah stopped and said something quietly to her and Alison turned back to him. "Thank you, Sam."

His throat constricted as he watched them walk to the front desk. He waited while they checked in and he didn't leave the hotel until long after they had disappeared into the elevator bank. Then he went outside and strode away, quickly putting as much distance between him and the hotel as possible.

Something was changing. He couldn't put his finger on whether it was something inside him or something about the nature of his leaping that was being forever altered, and he didn't understand why the change had occurred. He only knew that this leap was inexorably pushing him off one track and on to another, and his stomach twisted into knots at the thought of it.

Sam stopped when he reached a park several blocks away and sank down onto a bench. He sat there until well after it had grown dark, watching people pass by and regaining his equilibrium. Then, finally feeling ready to go on, he leaped.


	4. Impasse

**Disclaimer:** Not mine, just this story.

**Prompt:** nightmare

**Summary:** When Sam leaps back to the Project, a conversation with Beth reveals that things aren't going so well for those he left at home.

**A/N: **Again, many many thanks go to cecilegrey for the beta.

* * *

**IMPASSE**

_**New Mexico**_**  
**_**May 23, 2005**_

I

As things began to materialize around him and the disorientation from leaping passed, Sam was immediately seized by a sense of déjà vu. He was inside, in a place lit only by moonlight, standing beside a large window looking out on a hauntingly familiar landscape – vast, open and flat except for the mountains and rock formations off in the distance. One formation in particular caught his eye for it was glowing with blue light and pulsating with energy.

"Ziggy?" he exhaled in astonishment.

_I'm home!_

It was too good to be true and he was sure it wasn't permanent. This was another leap and he was here for a specific purpose, after which he would leap out again. At that moment, as if to confirm his assumption, he heard muffled shouting off in the distance and noticed several dark figures swarming about the building nestled between the monolithic rocks that housed Project Quantum Leap. He had no idea what was going on but a terrible sense of foreboding pervaded him. Something was wrong at the project and he needed to get over there.

"Al?"

A woman's voice, familiar, filled with anxiety. He turned with a start, realizing that he was standing inside of someone else's living room, the outline of a couch, chairs, a wall unit now taking shape before his eyes. There was a click as a switch was flipped and the room lit up.

"Sam?" she exclaimed.

Startled, Sam blinked at the figure that had appeared from somewhere deep inside the house and stood in the doorway.

"It really is you."

"Beth!"

Beth Calavicci knew him. She rushed forward and threw her arms around him. He returned the embrace warmly.

"Of all the times for you to finally come home," she whispered. "How are you, Sam?"

"Fine, all things considered," he said ruefully. He pulled back, gently clasping her forearms, and looked into her face. She appeared haggard and drawn, her usual lovely smile tense as she studied his face, too.

"But you're not really home, are you? This is just another leap."

"I'm sorry." Still, he thought he saw a glimmer of hope beneath her crestfallen expression.

"It's been exactly five years since they lost you, Sam. Ten since you first leaped. When are you going to just come home and stay?"

"Five _years_?" he repeated in wonder. Had it been that long since he'd been leaping on his own? Or was he in the future?

She nodded and led him lightly by the arm toward the seating around the coffee table. As he took in the details of the warm, comfortable living room – the lovely Persian area rug with geometric designs in light earthy colors, the brown wood furniture pieces and black leather seating, a vase of calla lilies and family photos on the mantel of the grey stone fireplace – the memories began to fill in, memories of weekends and evenings spent in the large ranch house with Al and Beth and their four little girls, who all called him Uncle Sam. Odd memories that he'd lived pre-leap…and yet hadn't.

"It's been a long time."

"Yeah," he agreed wistfully. "It has been."

They sat down together on the long couch.

"What day is it?"

"Monday." She realized what he meant and added, "May 23rd, 2005. You disappeared on May 23rd, 2000."

Sam started at the mention of the current year. He was remembering a leap into Rio two years earlier in which he was there to help Al and his family – and discovered that the timeline had been altered so that he and Al never met. Through his conversation with the friend that didn't know him anymore he learned that Beth had passed away in 2001, a few years after the two of them split up. Since then he'd managed to change things, so that he and Al _had_ met and worked on the project together, Beth and Al never divorced and Beth's life had been saved. A ripple effect from only one change that he was aware of making; he didn't know exactly how it happened, only that the reality had changed and the memories were there. And there was a leap for Trudy…

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Sam said, shaking his head. "How is Trudy?"

It was Beth's turn to look surprised. "Fine. All the girls are fine."

"Is she still traveling?"

"I didn't know you heard about her traveling. Trudy wasn't even talking about it until after you were gone. But yes, she's still moving from one faraway place to another. She returns to specific places that she likes and where she has friends, and she comes home to visit, which makes us happy. She's been taking more permanent jobs, too. Right now she's living and working as an English teacher in Shanghai."

He smiled. "That's great."

Beth was studying him searchingly, probably wondering where his question had come from.

"May 23rd," he mused. "You remember the exact date."

She averted her eyes, staring at her hands for a moment before looking up to meet his gaze again. "I'll always remember the exact date. You know, I've always wondered if maybe I didn't do the right thing. Al doesn't blame me but still…I feel responsible in a way."

"Why?" He was astonished that she could even think such a thing. "Why would you feel responsible?"

"Without anyone in the waiting room there's been no way to even locate and keep track of you, yet alone establish contact."

"Yes, I realize that," he said remorsefully.

"And I knew before it happened that it would, that you would stop switching places with people."

He stared in unbelief. "You remember?"

"Would you like some coffee or tea?"

The abrupt change of subject startled him. "Oh…uh…I don't want to inconvenience you."

"You're not," she sighed, rising to her feet. "I can't sleep anyway. I was about to make myself tea when I heard…I thought maybe you were Al. But it's good to see you. Tea or coffee?"

"Tea is fine," he said absently.

"Make yourself comfortable. I'll just go put the water on to boil."

Troubled he stared after her as she disappeared into the kitchen. Something had gone wrong, Al was involved and Beth was left behind alone and worried. His stomach clenched and he suddenly became aware of how eerily silent the house was, how thick and heavy the air. Even Beth's movements in the kitchen seemed oddly muted. He stood quickly and returned to the window, gazing off at the dark silhouettes moving frantically against the bright glow of the mountain. Idly he thought of the neural link he had with Ziggy and wondered if she knew of his presence here now.

"I remember you like orange spice tea."

He turned at the sound of her voice and went over to take the tray she was carrying.

"No, no, I'm fine. Please sit."

Beth set everything down on the coffee table and slid his cup toward him. Sam didn't have the heart to tell her that she hadn't put a teabag in his water, nor was there any sign of one anywhere on the tray, but the gaffe confirmed for him just how distraught she was.

She sat down on the couch beside him again and picked up her own cup of plain hot water, taking a sip and wincing. "Oh, God!" she exclaimed flustered, nearly dropping it on the table. "I forgot the teabags. I'll be right back."

"It's okay…" Sam tried to catch her arm as she stood but she moved off swiftly. He brought his hand up and ran it over his face, his concern growing by the minute.

"Stupid," she muttered when she returned. She handed him a packet of orange spice then proceeded to steep her own cup of jasmine. He set the teabag on the table unopened and leaned toward her.

"Beth, what's wrong? What's going on over at the project? Who are all those people?"

"They're M.P.s. The funding to the project was cut." She stopped to wring the water out of her teabag then dropped it onto her saucer. "Actually it was cut almost a year ago but Al managed to stall them. Then a few weeks ago they completely pulled the plug, gave everyone until the end of this month to clear out and directed the M.P.s to make sure everyone was out and seize it all. Al thinks they want to dismantle everything so they can learn to build another hybrid computer like Ziggy. Or they're trying to at least. My husband said they'd do it over his dead body and staged an old-fashioned sit-in to stop them."

"What?"

"You picked a hell of a time to show up, Sam. I should have known," she remarked acerbically, mouth twisted into a bitter half-smile. "Al shut himself in there two days ago and had Ziggy lock the place down so no one, M.P.s or staff, can get in."

Sam felt his jaw drop. He couldn't even begin to fathom what could have possessed Al to do something so reckless and downright stupid. Surely he realized that it would accomplish nothing but landing him in jail.

"How did he manage to get everyone out? Someone must have realized what he was planning to do…I mean, there were M.P.s working there as security who must have been watching…" He trailed off, noticing how uncomfortable Beth appeared at the moment. She wouldn't look at him, instead staring into her cup. "Beth?"

"Everyone was preoccupied with getting out of the building because of the potential disaster," she finally said.

"Potential disaster?" he echoed. "What potential disaster?"

She took a few sips of tea before answering. "The one Ziggy made up."

Sam leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands with a groan. "What happened?"

"I only know that Ziggy alerted the entire project about a leak and ordered everyone to evacuate. Something about potentially dangerous fumes."

"And?" he coaxed, straightening and looking her in the eye again.

"No one had any reason to doubt it and they were busy getting out without panicking," she said with a shrug. "Nobody bothered to check whether there actually _was_ any leak…or where Al was. As soon as everyone was out, Ziggy locked everything down with Al safe in the control room."

"So Ziggy lied," Sam stated flatly, stunned. "I don't believe it. I never programmed Ziggy to lie."

"No, but you programmed her to learn. She and Al have spent a lot of time together since you've been gone, Sam. Al always said she's an apt pupil of human nature. I'm sure she's learned a lot of things from him."

"Like how to lie," he sighed, slowly shaking his head with a grimace. If he got anywhere near Al tonight he was going to wring his neck. That thought propelled him to his feet again and he paced back to the window to stare out at the project. He couldn't bring himself to turn away and look at Beth when he asked the next question on his mind, the words sour in his mouth. "Beth, is Al drinking again?"

"I haven't smelled alcohol on his breath," she retorted sharply.

It occurred to Sam that even if she knew Al was drinking she wouldn't tell him. Whatever the cost she was protecting her husband.

"Where are the others? Gooshie…?"

"Sam." The deeply somber note in her voice seized his attention and he turned to her. She'd twisted in her seat to face him and her expression was grief-stricken. "Oh, God, Sam, I'm sorry…Gooshie died last year."

"What?"

"He had cancer. I'm so sorry you had to find out this way."

Sam's shoulders sagged and he slumped back against the frame of the window, leaning on it for support, his thoughts turning to the absentminded, brilliant little head programmer who was his friend. He buried his face in his hands. How could he have allowed himself to miss all this? And how had things gotten so out of hand?

"There was nothing you could have done," she said, attempting to comfort him, "even if you were here."

His hands dropped to his sides again. "I'm a doctor, I might have seen something…something that would have helped them catch it sooner…"

"No." She shook her head vigorously. "It wouldn't have made a difference. He had stomach cancer and the prognosis was just not good from the start."

"God, he must have suffered."

"The last days were difficult. But Tina took good care of him and up until the end he was surrounded by friends who loved him."

_Except for me._

He pushed aside the guilt beginning to weigh on him and straightened, forcing his attention back to the present matter. "What about everyone else? Bena…"

"Al's alone in there."

"Can you reach him? You've gotta talk him out of this. This is ridiculous and it won't end well. God, I can't believe he's doing something this…this stupid!"

Anger, disappointment, confusion and concern were all warring within him and he began to pace restlessly.

"You're convinced that _I_ can talk him out of it?" Beth shook her head and laughed resignedly, sadly. "You obviously forgot at least one thing about Al since you last saw him. Once he's made up his mind about something that's it. In certain ways he can be as stubborn as you are. Besides, things are already out of hand."

"I'll say," he said through gritted teeth. "How long does he think he can keep this up? Eventually he'll run out of food and water, if the M.P.s don't get in there first." He paused. "Are you in contact with him?"

Beth didn't answer but he knew. They probably didn't speak over the telephone. Even a cell phone would be too easy to trace. But Al would have worked something out so they could stay in contact, maybe through Ziggy. He couldn't imagine that Al would shut Beth out completely…

"You are." He strode back to the couch and sat so he would be eye level with her. "Beth, you gotta…"

"It doesn't matter. Sam, no one knows better than me that Al has completely lost it and this entire fiasco is futile. The last desperate act of a desperate man." A frightened expression flickered over her face and he felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

"I've gotta get out there…" He rose once more but she stopped him with a firm hand on his arm.

"No, it won't do any good. Yesterday Ziggy zapped several of the M.P.s with electricity when they got into the elevator to try to reach the lower levels, on Al's order. If they get in there and find him, he's finished."

Sam sank back down onto the couch and stared open-mouthed at her. "I can't believe it. Has Al lost his mind?"

A half-laugh, half-sob emerged from her. "All I know is Al hasn't been the same since you vanished, Sam, and I don't know what to do for him anymore. He hasn't really been the same since you first leaped ten years ago – he stopped sleeping or eating well and he kept dropping weight. But after they lost contact with you completely…" she trailed off, shaking her head. Her voice was raw with despair when she uttered her next words, cutting through his heart like a dagger. "He was inconsolable."

This couldn't all be because of him, his leaping. It just couldn't. Something else was going on.

"Beth, listen to me," he pleaded. "Al doesn't need to do this. He doesn't need to ruin his career or his life over this project."

_He's supposed to be free, enjoying his life with you._

"Sam, it's not the project or his career. Al misses his best friend. He needs _you_. Don't you understand?"

He could only stare at her.

"We all want you back. You're here now but you're not permanently back in the present, if this even is your present. And they need the project in order to have any chance of retrieving you. Don't they? That's why Al won't let them shut it down. Not while there's a missing man. Besides, he's protecting Ziggy. They'd be dismantling a sentient being. Sam, for nearly five years he and D…the others have kept trying to find you…"

"All this time they've been trying to find me?" he exclaimed.

"Of course!" Her tone was almost cross. "Why would you even need to ask that? Did you really expect them to give up on you? Al is going to do whatever it takes to find you and bring you home."

There was no doubt in Sam's mind what the purpose of this leap was. What he didn't understand was why he'd leaped here instead of inside the project. He needed to talk to his friend, to put a stop to this and make Al understand that he wasn't to blame; that he needed to let it go, let _him_ go...

The full meaning of Beth's words suddenly sank in and he gasped as understanding blazed through him.

"No," he half-whispered. "He didn't…he wouldn't…"

"I hope not," she murmured but her expression told him he was too late. And she knew what her husband had been planning.

"You knew. Why didn't you stop him?"

"Because it wouldn't make a difference. I already lost my husband long before tonight." Her voice broke. "He spends his days and most of his nights in that damn imaging chamber. Sometimes he doesn't come home at all. Especially lately. He kept saying he was getting close…I guess he was right. You're here now…"

"Oh, God…Beth, Al isn't responsible. It's me. I'm the one who's choosing to leap, it's always been me. I didn't know it, not at first. But then there was one leap where I started to leap as myself…that's when I discovered it. And even then I didn't believe it right away…" He trailed off as he caught the look of utter disbelief on Beth's face.

"You _chose_ not to come home? You don't want to come home?"

"It's not that I don't want to come home. It's that I chose to keep leaping. I do want to come home, very much. But there are so many…"

"You chose not to come home?"

"I chose to keep leaping, to help…"

"You chose not to come home," she repeated yet again.

Her face had darkened and he knew he was in trouble.

"That's probably shocking…"

Despite her obvious anger Beth's expression suddenly softened inexplicably and her voice was even and quiet when she spoke. "No, Sam, that isn't shocking. It doesn't surprise me at all that you would want to keep helping people, or that you would sacrifice your own happiness and comfort to do it. That's always been your nature, for as long as I've known you. What's shocking to me is that you could be so thoughtless and inconsiderate of the people in your own life who love you."

As softly spoken as they were, those last words were like a hammer hitting him between the eyes.

"If you're in control and you didn't want to come home, why didn't you at least leap back and tell everyone five years ago? That they didn't need to waste their time and energy looking for you? Al has been assuming that you _wanted_ to come home. So has everybody else. How could you just disappear and leave everybody wondering and worrying for so many years? Your family, your friends. I don't understand."

Her next words were a bullet striking.

"I don't understand how you could do that to Donna."

_Donna!_

"At least when Al was M.I.A. you leaped in and assured me that he was alive and that he was coming home eventually. You gave me the hope I needed to hold on. And that _still_ didn't make it easy or less lonely. Donna doesn't even have that…"

Beth wasn't nearly finished with what she had to say but Sam heard no more of it.

II

"Here," Beth said softly, setting a glass of water down on the coffee table.

She perched beside him and watched him with concern. He was slumped against one corner of the couch, head propped up against his hand, his thoughts spinning.

"Are you all right?"

Sam only vaguely nodded in response. He was too overwhelmed to speak.

"I didn't mean for it to come out this way, Sam. I was upset. It's been hard for all of us to watch her…sometimes it hurts me just to look at her. She misses you so much. And I…I miss my husband…again…but it wasn't fair of me…I'm sorry…"

"No," he interrupted her, finding his voice. "You have no reason to be sorry."

Slowly he straightened up and looked at her, a question in his eyes.

"Al never told you because Donna explicitly forbade him from reminding you about her."

"How…?" he lamented. "How could I have forgotten her?"

"Leaping."

"But why didn't I remember her at some point?" he insisted, anguished. "I eventually remembered that I had a sister and a brother. I remembered everyone else at the project, without Al reminding me. And once I started leaping as myself I remembered everything…I thought it was everything. God, what's wrong with me? Why didn't I remember my wife?"

"I don't know, Sam. Al never understood it. I didn't either. Maybe it was necessary that you not remember her, so you could do what you needed to in the leaps. It's what Donna thought, and that's why while Al was still in contact with you she wouldn't let him remind you about her. She wanted to make sure that nothing interfered with your mission, as difficult as that was for her. So you'd be able to do what you had to and finally come home. I guess we all should have realized it would never be finished, that you'd never come home. There will always be something wrong that needs to be put right. And your nature…you'll always want to do something about it."

Tears spilled from his eyes and he hung his head. "I'm a jerk."

"You're a kind, compassionate, caring man with a good heart and the best intentions always. You just…lost sight of certain things and you left a little bit of a mess behind at home."

"That Al's been cleaning up," he bit out.

Beth touched his shoulder comfortingly and he raised his head again.

"Have some water," she said gently, gesturing to the glass in front of him.

Sam obeyed mechanically.

"Al never blamed you for any of it. At first he was angry when you stepped into the accelerator before everything was ready…that you went behind his back when he wasn't there. But he got over it. He could never stay angry with you. He really believed in the project, and in you…he still does."

"I don't know why…" he said, shaking his head. "I'll never know why he had…still has so much faith in me. He believed in me when no one else did."

She took his free hand in hers. "And you him."

He nodded.

"But I don't think he counted on losing you forever, Sam."

"I'm sorry," he whispered sadly. "I didn't…I never imagined things would unravel like this…"

"I know." She squeezed his hand. "Sam, I'll always be truly grateful for the hope you gave me that day in 1969, hope that I desperately needed."

"You remember…and you recognized me."

"Tonight isn't the first time you've appeared in my living room and you had the same shock of white in your hair in 1969 as you did when I met you in 1982, as you have now. I can only guess what you changed then." She shuddered visibly but then seemed to push off the thought. "But that hope you gave me was a precious gift. I'm sorry I was so harsh with you. I'm upset for Donna but I shouldn't have sprung things on you this way. I'm sorry."

"No, you had every right to be upset." He took a deep breath. "Do you have any other surprises for me?"

There was something in her expression that told him she did. But she didn't answer, apparently choosing not to share it. Maybe she felt he'd already had enough shocks for one night. Instead she released his hand and stood, taking up the tray with the cups and the unused teabag. Sam rose too and followed her into the warm yellow and white kitchen, past the large round table to the sink at the far end.

"Where..." he stopped and licked his dry lips. His heart was in his throat. "Where is Donna now?"

She busied herself with pouring out the remaining contents of the cups and washing them. He handed her the glass of water he'd carried in, staring at her anxiously. With a sigh Beth set it down in the sink, shut off the spigot and turned to him. His voice rose in panic.

"Beth. Is she all right?"

"Yes."

He leaned against the counter releasing a sigh of relief.

"Al convinced her to get as far away as possible."

"Did she know what he was planning?"

"I don't know for sure. But…it was difficult for Donna to stay here. Leaving was the best thing for her. She's on Martha's Vineyard right now."

A small smile played about his lips. "That's not surprising. She loves Martha's Vineyard," Sam murmured dreamily, remembering. "She always has." They'd taken several vacations there. Donna especially loved it in the late fall and winter, when the days were grey and cold, the ocean wild, the beach meditative, the fireside cozy.

His thoughts quickly turned from the idyllic to the solemn. In one of his very first leaps he'd changed history in order to get Donna back into his life. He reunited her with her father so that maybe her deep wounds from his leaving the family would start to heal. So she could love and trust again…love and trust _him_. And now he had gone and done the thing she feared most – he'd abandoned her; twice. He had no idea when or even if he would return home, and it really wasn't fair to keep her suffering the way Beth had, waiting for him, knowing that he was alive but that maybe he would never return to her. So many years of loneliness and hopelessness – it had to be unbearable for her, left alone while he continued leaping through time, bound to him by a marriage vow but eternally apart from him. Somehow he had to release her…

"Do you mind if I ask how you came to make the choice to keep leaping?"

He brought his attention back to Beth. "The first time I leaped as myself it was into a bar called Al's Place, on the day of my birth. Actually it was pretty much the exact moment of my birth," he said with a rueful laugh. "Al was the bartender and the owner. And everyone in the bar looked like people I'd met or leaped into on other leaps, but they had different names. Some had the same names as people from the project. And one of the men there…he was a leaper…he leaped out right before my eyes…and no one but me and the bartender remembered he'd been there. When Al found me, our Al I mean, and we talked I realized that this leaper was Al's uncle."

"That's…a coincidence."

"There were a lot of coincidences. The whole leap was so strange," he said distantly. "It was like a dream. Maybe I _was_ dreaming."

"It was in this leap that you made the decision?"

"Yes. That bartender seemed to know all about me, about Al, about the project. I thought he was the one leaping me around, or that he knew who was, that he could give me answers. At first he wouldn't. He just…played games with me. Then he finally told me that I was leaping me, that I could go home any time I wanted to but I had to accept that it was me, that it was my choice. He told me that I had done a lot of good and could do a lot more."

She was silent, absorbing his words. "So," she began finally, "he made it clear in not so many words that you could either go home knowing that there were countless people suffering that you might have been able to help but didn't, or you could keep leaping and helping those people but give up your chance to come home because there will always be just one more thing to put right."

"Yeah. That pretty much sums it up."

"That's some lousy choice you were offered, Sam."

The memory of the entire Cokeburg leap and each conversation he'd had with that bartender was as vivid as ever. "But it was my choice," he said thoughtfully. "And as Al…bartender Al…reminded me, it's why I created the project, why I wanted to leap…because I wanted to make the world a better place. And he never…actually said I couldn't go home."

Beth's eyes were compassionate and melancholy. "But I guess you'll never allow yourself to go home. Not for good anyway."

Sam dipped his head and stared at the floor, slowly beginning to shake his head. "This is my life now," he said quietly, "quantum leaping. Traveling through time…it's what I've always wanted. I'm doing it now and finally making a difference in the world instead of just theorizing and dreaming. It's not easy and it's lonely. Very lonely. But I guess that's the trade-off. Maybe it is a lousy choice. But…it's just the way it is." A rueful smile played about his lips as he heard himself repeating bartender Al's words.

"Well, I think you were already making a difference in the world before you ever leaped. It didn't involve time travel but you certainly made a difference in Al's life when you helped him. And mine. I don't know where we would have been if you hadn't stood up for him at Starbright, if you hadn't been a true friend helping him through one of the most difficult times in his life."

"The vending machine."

Keeping track of the various details that were altered with every timeline change was daunting but he was certain that Al was drunk and venting his rage on that same vending machine when they met in this timeline, too.

"And his drinking," she added with a nod. "Al was a mess when he came home from 'Nam and his recovery was not one continuous move forward. It never is. There were a lot of giant backward steps. And as the depression and night terrors got worse he self-medicated more and more. I did everything I could for him…but I was too close to it. You made a huge difference, Sam. I don't think Al ever had a real best friend in his life until you, not someone like you who really cared and had his back no matter what. And you're a good friend to me, too," she added, taking his hand again. "I guess I don't understand why it has to be a trade-off. Why can't you just come home in between leaps?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't believe it would really be any better for anyone if I came home for a short time but then disappeared into the ether again and again."

"But you're in control of when and where you leap."

"Up to a point but I'm not always on target. Like tonight. I leaped into your living room instead of the control room where Al is."

"Maybe you are on target tonight and you just assume you're not."

He smiled admiringly at her. Despite the dire situation and the shocking revelations of this night he'd enjoyed talking to Beth and she'd given him a little bit of a different perspective on things.

"So what will you do now?"

"I'm not sure. But I'll figure it out, Beth. I promise. Somehow I will make this right."

Things were out of hand and trying to halt them would be like closing the door after the horse was out of the barn. Best case scenario, Al was in hot water. Worst case, his friend had already stepped into the accelerator and leaped after him, assuming the accelerator hadn't killed him. Beth was right that he couldn't do a thing…in this present. But he wasn't here for that. He'd leaped here to talk to Beth, so he could learn and remember…and keep a promise that he made. He would leap back to a time when he could prevent it all from happening in the first place and convince Al that it was okay to let go…for Sam had accepted the life he'd chosen and had already let him go. Then he would somehow fix things with Donna, find a way to release her from the pain and anguish the way he'd done for Beth a long time ago. Even if it meant that he would lose her for good…

It was time to go. He took his leave of Beth Calavicci and leaped.


	5. A Leap for the Leaper

**Disclaimer:** None of it belongs to me. Just this story.

**Prompt:** hopeless

**Summary:** Sam leaps to stop Al from leaping.

**A/N:** Many, many thanks again to cecilegrey for the beta.

* * *

**A LEAP FOR THE LEAPER**

_**New Mexico  
May 22, 2005  
11:45 PM**_

I

There was no disorientation, no lag time. Sam immediately knew when and where he was from the sound of his invention activating, Ziggy's sultry feminine voice counting down minutes and seconds to ready, the sight of blinking colored lights from the machinery and the pulsing of the hybrid computer's blue interface orb.

He dashed toward the ramp leading up to the accelerator chamber, calling out his friend's name, throwing his arms around Al from behind and tackling him to the floor before he could go in. Then he shouted at Ziggy to shut the accelerator down and take it offline. Within seconds the noise level in the place had dropped, leaving only the hum of the air conditioning and Ziggy's machinery.

"What the…Sam?" Al's voice shot up an octave and cracked on Sam's name.

"Al, you _lunatic_!" He clutched him tightly, his heart pounding in his ears, and noticed with a shock how small Al felt in his arms.

"Sam!" he cried and squirmed beneath him, but Sam kept him pinned, unwilling to let him go. "Gee, Sam, I'd have fired that thing up years ago if I knew it would finally bring you home." There was relief and warmth and satisfaction in his voice.

"God, of all the hare-brained…"

"Come on, Sammy, let go and let me up so I can give you a big hug back."

"Shut up," Sam snarled into his hair.

"You're crushing me. Come on, let me up."

Relenting finally he shifted and rose to let Al up, holding out a hand to help him to his feet. Al said his name again and threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and giving him a powerful hug, clapping him on the back.

"Oh, God, it's good to see you again, Sam."

"What the hell were you doing, Al?"

"I was coming to bring you home. They're shutting us down…"

"That thing could have killed you!" His heart was still racing, his body trembling. "And even if it didn't, _you_ would have been lost in time! I can't believe you were gonna leave Beth behind! And how long do you think you would have survived leaping? You're seventy-one years old…"

"Seventy."

"What?"

"I'm seventy. I won't be seventy-one for another three weeks."

He smiled impishly and Sam glared at him.

"Damn it, it's not a joke, you scared me! Do you have any idea…?"

"Yeah, I do," Al cut him off. "Anyway, I would have managed."

Sam's anger and fright deflated at the transparent reference to his own reckless and ill-fated first leap. His shoulders drooped and he shook his head with a wry smile.

"Aw, don't sulk, Sam. I'm just saying I know." Al paused and then demanded, "So, where the hell have you been for the past five years?"

"I've been leaping."

"No kidding. But you're _you_. I mean, you're not changing places with other people anymore. We've had no way to track you." The grief in his voice was so tightly contained as to be practically imperceptible but Sam heard it, for he knew Al too well to miss it, and his heart hurt.

"I know. I'm sorry, Al..." Sam trailed off, sensing suddenly that someone else was there with them. He turned to look at the young woman in a white lab coat who had approached, a pretty woman in her mid to late thirties with long sandy brown hair and hazel eyes.

So Al wasn't alone like Beth believed after all, he thought with a frown. Did she have any idea he was locked in down here alone with this young woman?

Her gaze shifted warily between Sam and Al as if she was gauging the situation then it came to rest on Sam.

"Hello, Dr. Beckett. Welcome back." She spoke with a slight drawl and he looked closely at her. His struggle to place who she was must have shown in his face. "It's been a while and you're probably still a little Swiss-cheesed. I'm Dr. Fuller."

Together the name and the accent unleashed a flood of memory. Sammie Jo Fuller. He recalled working with this brilliant young woman, and then a series of leaps to Louisiana and she was there, too, but as a little girl. Abigail Fuller. This was Abigail's daughter…and _his_ daughter, who when she grew up ended up working here because of those leaps…and Al had involved her in this mess…

Sam shot him another glare then turned his attention back to her.

"Hi…Dr. Fuller." He followed her lead and kept it formal. She seemed to have no idea he was anything other than a boss to her. "I'm sorry…I didn't realize you were here."

"I'm glad you found us before we went looking for you. If you had arrived two minutes later Al would have been inside and we wouldn't have been able to shut the accelerator down without killing him."

"Yeah, Sam did always have perfect timing," Al grumbled.

She regarded both of them, brow furrowed.

"It's okay, Kid," he said, favoring her with an affectionate smile. "We're on hold. Go on and take a break while I talk to him."

"I'll be in my office. Good to see you again, Dr. Beckett."

"Al…" Sam began when she'd left the control room.

"Come on. If I'm not gonna leap now I want to change out of this monkey suit." He gestured to the white Fermi suit he was wearing.

Sam took in the sight of his friend's body for the first time and winced. Beth wasn't exaggerating when she said Al had lost weight. The skin-tight leap suit emphasized just how thin the man had grown, his ribs poking through the material.

"Hold down the fort, Zig," Al said as they passed the console.

"As you wish, Admiral."

"As you wish?" Sam repeated softly in amazement, stopping and turning toward the console. Ziggy and Al had indeed been spending a lot of time together. Still, despite her conciliatory tone he somehow sensed that the hybrid computer was in a snit. Other than shouting for her to shut down the accelerator he realized he hadn't acknowledged her at all. Though she'd never admit it she was probably miffed at that.

Al grinned at him and leaned in to speak confidentially. "Why don't you stay and get reacquainted. I'll meet you in my office in ten minutes."

II

Fifteen minutes later Sam was sitting on the beat-up brown leather couch in Al's office, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, watching his friend move about the room. Al was still wearing the leap suit, though he'd claimed that he wanted to change into his own clothes, and he paced the office like a caged animal, opening and closing drawers in the grey metal file cabinets, coming to the couch to sit down but changing his mind, returning to the desk to rummage through the drawers there.

"What are you looking for?"

Al stopped in the middle of the room, frowning, and raked his fingers through his hair. His normally clean-shaven face was covered with stubble, his unruly salt and pepper hair much longer than military regulation dictated. He looked exhausted and lost but there was something wild in his eyes too, and Sam straightened, his alarm growing as he observed him, then rose to his feet and went to him, grasping both of his shoulders.

"Al?"

"How did you know I was about to leap, Sam?"

"Beth."

"You spoke to Beth?"

Sam nodded, looking closely at the gaunt face, the dark circles under the bloodshot eyes, evidence that for too long he'd had little if any sleep. He didn't detect any smell of alcohol on Al, even close up, just the familiar faint scent of cigar smoke in his hair.

"It was a day or so in the future…you know, Beth thinks you're down here alone."

"Now don't get suspicious. Sammie Jo is your kid, so she's family, like another daughter to me."

"Then why didn't you tell Beth she was locked in here with you?"

"Because I didn't expect her to be here. She wasn't supposed to be but she guessed what I was up to and didn't evacuate. The kid staged her own little coup. Said she stayed to be my observer and…"

"What?"

He shrugged Sam's hands off his shoulders and began to pace again. "It was something we talked about not long after we lost contact with you but we waited to try it, until now. Actually _she_ wanted to leap, but she needed to be here to work the retrieval. We were a good match for the neural link, her being your daughter, so we set it up. Maybe that's why she knew what I was planning…I would've managed on my own if I had to and I told her I didn't want anyone else involved. But she insisted I needed her. She definitely inherited your obstinacy."

Sam glowered at him but Al was facing away, pacing toward the couch area. He moved to intercept him.

"Both of you had to realize how dangerous it would be for you, Al. And how would you have come back? You have a wife…and daughters…"

"Sammie Jo's been perfecting your retrieval program," he said with a proud grin. "Absolutely brilliant, that kid. Not that anyone's surprised. Anyway, this was our chance to try it out, and Ziggy calculated the odds it would work at seventy-seven percent. Not perfect but a hell of a lot better than they were when you leaped. She's probably working on it in her office as we speak. She's like you once she's involved with something. At least _she_ takes breaks though."

"I took breaks…sometimes."

Al was already walking away from him and Sam followed him to the desk.

"It wasn't always you coming to drag me away. I came in here a lot, too," he said, sitting on the edge of the desk while Al rummaged through the drawers again. Instead of scrutinizing him this time Sam gave him space and looked away, eyes combing the room now. He hadn't been in here in years.

The room was as he remembered, though some things had changed from one timeline to the next. Al's office still looked like someone's living room with its worn-out but comfortable couch and leather armchairs around a low wood coffee table that was really used as a footrest. They'd had plenty of informal meetings around that table before he leaped, him and Al alone or with Gooshie and Tina, but then as reality shifted with one or both of Donna and Sammie Jo added to the mix. The file cabinets and the old-fashioned heavy oak desk he perched on were placed along the wall furthest from the meeting area.

Small touches in the room were different. Family photos that hadn't been there originally now sat on the desk and the bookshelves along the wall adjacent to it; Al and Beth's wedding picture, the girls' graduation pictures, family vacation pictures. A large throw in yarns of various shades of mauve, pink, light yellow and tan that Beth had crocheted was tossed across the back of the couch where there had once been a tattered tan fleece blanket.

A large framed map of the world Sam didn't recall ever seeing was mounted onto the wall behind the desk. It was covered with pins and arrows drawn in black pen. He slid off the desk and went over to get a closer look, discovering that each of the pins was stuck in the middle of a country name. Tiny numbers, dates, were neatly written underneath each pin, the arrows stretched from one pin to the next in date order, and it hit Sam that Al had been tracing Trudy's route around the world. The arrows were linear at first – as if she was just going to circumvent the globe in a perfect circle – but then they began crisscrossing all over the map as her path became less predictable and she shifted back and forth between continents. Al must have used a ruler; the arrows were perfectly straight and neat. Dates were as early as August 2001 and as late as February 2004.

"That's Trudy's route. You wouldn't remember that. You were already leaping long before she left to travel."

"Wow. This took real dedication."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't keep track of you anymore so it kept me busy." Al's dig wasn't lost on him. "Anyway, Sammie Jo and Ziggy had a theory that because of our neural link I would leap to wherever you were. But it took a few years for Sammie's work on the retrieval program to pay off…"

"It was still risky," he chided, turning away from the map. Al had returned to the couch area and was leaning on one of the armchairs from behind, his hands white-knuckled as he gripped the high back. Sam went to him swiftly but Al straightened before he reached him. He stopped at the couch, poised to assist Al if necessary. "So, what, is Ziggy single-handedly running the whole project now?"

"Well, not the whole thing."

"How long do you think you can carry this on? Besides what it's doing to you, running Ziggy and the imaging chamber requires massive amounts of power and I bet they'll be shutting you off soon. Even if it's by sabotage. I'm surprised they haven't…" He gasped. "Al, if they had shut the power off while you were in the accelerator…"

"They tried. The power, the plumbing…"

"Tried…"

He smirked. "But Ziggy found a work-around. It'll be next to impossible for anyone to catch on…and it's not like we're keeping the entire place powered up, just certain areas…"

Sam groaned and sank down onto the couch, closing his eyes. He pressed his fingers to his temples.

"So, Beth told you I was gonna leap?" Al asked, seemingly oblivious to Sam's pained reaction.

"I guessed…and you had probably already leaped at that point." He dropped his hands to his sides and stared hard at him. "But she told me what's been going on. She told me you got Ziggy to shock the M.P.s when they tried to get in here."

Al looked far too pleased with himself.

"It's nothing to be proud of, Al. As if things weren't bad enough. You're gonna end up in jail if they get in. Or you'll starve to death down here eventually if they don't, and you've involved Sammie Jo…"

"After the elevator they may just shoot me on sight if they get in here. You know, Ziggy finds the defiant side of human nature especially fascinating."

"I'll bet," Sam muttered, shaking his head at him. "I should kick your butt for all of this…I won't even ask what the hell you were thinking staging this ridiculous stunt because you obviously weren't. How could you do something so stupid? You've got to realize…"

"Hey! This so-called stupid stunt got you back here. That's something, isn't it?" He added something under his breath that Sam didn't hear but didn't need to.

He sighed. "I guess you want to kick my butt, too. You were angry at me when I leaped…maybe you still are…"

"Of course I was angry at you! That was a stupid thing to do, leaping before everything was ready, _and_ you went behind my back, Sam. For a genius you can be a real _stupido_. Then when we finally found you your memory was gone and you didn't even know who I was."

Al turned his back on him with a sour expression and paced away again. Sam thought of their encounter in Rio in the changed timeline, when he'd retained all of his memories of a friendship that had never been and Al had no idea who he was; and he understood with sharp clarity and remorse how painful that moment must have been for Al.

Sam wanted to apologize, to try to explain, but Al spoke first, pivoting to face him again, the tension in his shoulders easing.

"But I moved on," he said. "Even if I wanted to stay angry at you – and I didn't – it wouldn't have done any good. Besides, you needed my help."

"Beth told me you stopped eating and sleeping well after I leaped. She's been really worried about you for a long time."

"I'm her husband," Al said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "All wives worry about their husbands."

"That's not all it is and you know it."

"Anyway, I'm not letting them shut the project down while you're still out there, alone. And I can't let them kill a sentient being. Besides, Ziggy has the instinct to survive so it didn't take much to convince her to do things my way. She understands what's at stake." He came to the couch and finally plopped down next to him, leaning back with a weary sigh and rubbing his forehead. "And you are still out there alone. This is just a leap. You're not home."

"Oh, Al, you don't need to do this…"

"Are you kidding? I should have tried this five years ago. I'd have gotten your tail back here then."

"Al…"

"God, Sam, we thought you died and your body never came back, that you just died lost somewhere in time…" There was a quaver in Al's voice and he stopped, drawing in a deep breath. "Man, I need a cigar. I left them all upstairs. Damn." He dragged his sleeve across his eyes. "So, how far in the future are you?"

"Actually I think I may be from your past."

"Then you're leaping to the future? How are you supposed to know what to do in the future? Or even in the past if you don't have Ziggy and me to give you information?"

"I have to figure it out as I go. Sometimes I learn things in the future and then leap back to fix it, like now."

"Then you don't need help anymore," he stated, his voice flat.

"It's not that I don't need…or want help," Sam said gently, "I had to go on alone, without the project, even though…" His voice broke unexpectedly and he swallowed hard then took a deep breath before continuing. "Even though I wanted you to continue on with me more than anything."

"Who the hell said you had to go on alone?"

"I should have made contact with you before…and I owe you an explanation…"

He was about to say more but Al was on his feet again, wandering toward the door distractedly. Sam jumped up and went after him, grabbing his arm.

"What's wrong, Al? What's going on with you? And why are you still wearing that leap suit? I thought you wanted to change."

"Let's go upstairs, Sam. I really need a cigar."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Al. You better not be thinking of leaping still."

"I'll change when I get upstairs."

But they didn't go upstairs. When they got out the door Al hurried through the empty white corridor, Sam trailing after him, back into the control room where he asked Ziggy what the odds were that she could keep a lock on Sam once he leaped out of there.

"There is never a one hundred percent certainty of anything, Admiral," she hedged. "The possibility of beating the odds always exists. However, my connection to Dr. Beckett's brainwaves was severed two days eighteen hours and twenty-two minutes after the completion of his leap into Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tennessee on July 3rd, 1954. Contact was never reestablished."

"Elvis?" Sam repeated, confused. "No, I…"

"Elvis was the last person in the waiting room, Sam," Al told him. "No one else ever showed up in there again."

"I know, but…"

"Ziggy lost the connection a couple of days after you leaped out of Elvis and…"

"I did not lose the connection, Admiral," Ziggy corrected him, almost sounding annoyed. "Dr. Beckett severed the connection."

"I don't understand," Sam said. "There was another…"

But Al had already left the control room.

"Could you just stop moving for a minute, Al?" he muttered in frustration, going after him again.

There was no sign of him, no sound of footfalls in the hallway indicating the direction he went. For a few minutes he stood listening, hearing only the hum of the machinery, thinking of how odd it was to find his project so utterly empty again. Just Sammie Jo in one of the offices down the hall and Al…somewhere…

He probably went upstairs to his sleeping quarters to get his cigars, Sam thought, and he went to the stairwell and climbed the two levels.

III

Al's sleeping quarters were different. When he was a single man he'd been in a large room at the other end of the hall, living here at the Project. This time he'd deliberately chosen smaller quarters with the idea that he wouldn't be sleeping here unless necessary; he'd be going home to Beth and the girls. There was room enough for a small desk with a lamp and chair in one corner and on the other side of the room an upholstered blue wing chair for reading, a small night stand and the queen-size bed, which was currently unmade, Sam noted with raised eyebrows. Al was career Navy; it had been ingrained into him to keep his room and everything in it immaculate and neat. Without opening the closet he knew he'd find the few clothes hanging in there pressed neatly and organized by color, the shoes lined up precisely on the floor.

Then again, maybe he would be wrong about that now, too. He would never have believed Al would leave his bed messy, even if he _was_ going to leap into oblivion.

"After you leaped out of Elvis Ziggy was able to keep track of you for those two days or so, Sam," he said around the Cheval clenched in his teeth. Sam watched concerned as with visibly shaking hands Al fumbled with the matches and after several attempts finally lit one. "I knew you were still out there somewhere when Beth appeared here…and our girls. But we still couldn't find you."

Sam was speechless. Until this moment he hadn't considered that Al might be aware of the timeline changing around him, that he too would retain memories of them all. From his own experience Sam knew that sifting through and keeping track of memories from various shifting realities could be confusing to say the least. It might easily drive a person to distraction. Maybe that's why Al was so unbalanced and erratic…

"I owe you…"

He shook his head vehemently. "You don't owe me anything."

"But if I knew you'd be giving up coming home to get Beth back for me…"

"I did what I should have done for you the first time around," he insisted, moving closer to Al and touching his arm. Al wouldn't look at him, instead staring down at the burning cigar in his hand. Curls of thick smoke lazily drifted upward from the end. "Al, you're not to blame for any of it." _I am_, he left unsaid.

"Twice you gave up your chance to come home because of me."

Sam wordlessly wrapped his arm around Al and gave him a comforting squeeze then he guided him over to the bed and coaxed him to sit on the edge.

"It was my choice." He took the wing chair, dragging it up so he could sit face to face with him. "And it was my choice to leap in the first place. I have to live with the consequences but you don't. You should be enjoying your life with Beth and your daughters, not killing yourself over this project…over me."

Al stared at him through narrowed eyes. "Live with what? Everyone working on this project wanted to be here. You were foolish jumping the gun before we were ready, before the retrieval program worked, and you were lucky the thing didn't kill you. But it worked and every scientist here was thrilled to be part of the experiment of a lifetime. For me it was the next kick in the butt, helping you build all this then being there with you while you traveled through time. There really isn't anything can top flying to the moon. But _this_…" He gestured around him now with the cigar, sending wisps of smoke in all directions, and grinned. "This came close."

"That's right. You still joined NASA and went on one of the lunar missions in this timeline," Sam murmured, recalling Al without Beth and Al with her. In both timelines a restless, troubled man with far too much energy who was always craving the next thrill. A devoted husband and a loving father the second time around but still unable to settle down completely, jumping at the chance to accept the next mission or sign onto a new, exciting project.

"I almost didn't go. Beth waited so many years for me to come back from 'Nam…well, you know, it didn't seem fair to ask her to wait, to risk losing me again. But she insisted, said it was a once in a lifetime shot and if I didn't take it I'd regret it, that she didn't want that."

He held the cigar over the ashtray on the nightstand and pensively watched the ashes drop. Sam found himself staring at it, too, idly thinking how much more slowly cigars burned and of his father, who smoked cigarettes for his entire adult life. With John Beckett's already strong predisposition toward heart disease they had been his death sentence. Sam worried that Al would suffer the same fate given how long he'd been smoking and the number of cigars he smoked, but Al always insisted he was in tip-top shape considering his age and people should just leave him alone.

Al broke the silence. "She always did understand me too well. The woman's a saint."

"Yeah, well she puts up with you," Sam ribbed.

"That she does." He combed a hand through his hair and frowned. "Sam, did you think that because I had Beth you wouldn't matter to me anymore? That I would give up on you?"

"I didn't think I was part of your life anymore," he answered honestly. "When I first changed your history I changed our meeting so it didn't happen. I…ran into you on a leap."

"So, at some point after the Elvis leap we weren't friends and I didn't exist as part of the project."

"You and Ziggy. Maybe that's why there's no record of anything after that, why you don't remember…" Sam mused. "And why the connection was broken. Somehow I changed things again. There was a leap…"

He took a deep breath, preparing himself for the worst, and recounted the details of the leap into the strange bar in Cokeburg to Al, who puffed on his cigar and listened patiently, his face impassive at first but darkening as Sam went on.

"Sam, I don't know who the hell this bartender was but he sounds like a nozzle who messed with your head and I don't like it. He knew exactly what to say to you. You, the terminal Boy Scout. And whoever he was, it seems to me you only got half his point."

"Huh?" Sam squinted at him.

"You weren't there to help the two men trapped in the mine in that leap, right?"

"Not directly."

"Exactly. Several other people were involved with the rescue. That other leaper…Stawpah…and the other miners that went down to physically save them."

He waited for more. "And? What's your point?"

"That _is_ the point. There are other people who are willing to help and who can pick up the slack. You don't have to do everything alone and you're allowed to take a break. But somehow, from all that, _you_ concluded that you had to go on alone forever and leave everyone who cares about you behind wondering what the hell happened to you."

Sam gaped at him.

"Ahhh, I should've known. Maybe I did know. I always said you got a lot of Boy Scout in you. But I never pegged you thinking of yourself as a martyr."

"I'm not a martyr," he protested. "And I don't think of myself as one."

"Saint Beckett."

"Stop it…"

"Mother Teresa. You know what Mother Teresa said…"

"Al…" he growled.

"When she won the Nobel Prize in 1978…79…"

He already knew what Al was thinking and that he was intentionally provoking him. "I don't want to hear it."

"They asked her what we can do to promote world peace…"

"I told you I don't…"

"She said 'go home and love your family'."

The man was unreal. Sam shook his head at him incredulously. "God, Al, why do you insist on telling me things when I say I don't want to hear them?"

"It was for your own good. You needed to hear that."

Still shaking his head Sam slumped back in the chair and rolled his eyes in exasperation. "And since when do _you_ know so much about Mother Teresa?"

"Listen. For five years I watched you change strangers' lives for the better. I watched you risk your life for them. You _have_ done a lot of good. But when is it gonna be enough? And what about everyone here? If you're in control now why can't you balance both? I thought you wanted to come home."

"I did…do. It's just…how can I turn away from people in need when I'm in a position to help them?"

"So, how's your memory?" he asked, his jaw clenched.

"What?" Sam was startled by Al's swift shift in gears.

"Do you remember…?" He stopped himself, leaving the question hanging in the air unfinished.

His shoulders sagged and he nodded resignedly. "Yeah, I remember Donna."

Al seemed relieved. "Did Beth remind you?"

Sam's face grew warm with shame and he didn't answer.

"I'm not surprised. Donna's situation is a sore point for her as you can imagine."

"I know. And I know I need to deal with it. I can't understand why I didn't remember her."

"Maybe because you weren't married to her before you leaped. She wasn't here originally."

"Yeah, maybe," Sam answered distantly but he still couldn't accept that. He loved Donna as ardently as ever. How could he have forgotten her? "But I remember all the timelines. So I should have remembered her in two of them at least."

Al's silence spoke volumes and he nodded.

"I've been thinking that maybe I didn't do the right thing…changing things for her…I just set her up for another disappointment. Maybe she would have been better off if she never married me."

For a minute Al studied him. Then his eyes widened and he was on his feet once more, striding over to the closet, standing on a stepstool he kept in there, pushing things on the top shelf around with one hand while the other still held the cigar.

"What are you doing now?" Sam's patience was waning.

He was holding a shoebox under one arm when he stepped off the stool, which he brought over to the desk. Sam stood and went over, his curiosity piqued. Al set his cigar in the ashtray on the desk before pulling off the rubber band around the box and removing the top. It contained photographs and he began to sort through them.

"I don't know why Beth didn't…there's something you need to know before you go and do what I know you're thinking of doing."

Sam hated when Al did that. "No, Al, you don't know what I'm thinking…" he said, but Al was suddenly sticking something in his hands and he trailed off, staring slack-jawed at the photograph he now held. The bright overhead lights cast a glare on the glossy surface and he tilted it and brought it closer. Donna with a dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl who was the spitting image of her but had his cleft chin, a longer, thinner face than Donna and an expression that was so like his own father it brought a lump to his throat.

"It can't be," Sam whispered and he shivered, now recognizing in the child's face the extremely troubled teenager he'd met on a recent leap seven years in the future, a young girl who would have died if not for his intervention; and he felt sick as the implications of the girl's identity came crashing in on him. "Alison."

At the same time Al said, "Her name is Alison Joan Beckett, after Donna's mother Alice and your father John. She'll be five on June 2nd. Remember when we simo-leaped and you got to come home to September 1999 for a day?"

Sam felt his breath leave him.

"God, she's a terrific kid, Sam. They haven't done any IQ tests yet but she's way up there, and there's no question she inherited your musical talent in spades and then some..."

The photo slipped from Sam's trembling fingers. Al's warm hand on his shoulder pulled him out of the memory that had gripped him and he lowered himself into the deskchair. He felt faint.

"Al, I met her."

"What? Met who, Alison?"

"Yeah, in the future, I met her on a leap."

Al bent to pick up the photo and set it down in front of him. Sam leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, dropping his head onto his hands and studying the picture. They were seated, both wearing lavender, Donna holding Alison on her lap, their faces close. Both were beautiful, smiling for the camera, but sadness shadowed his wife's eyes. His heart squeezed painfully and he shut his eyes against thoughts of the dismal future, the tragedy he knew was in store for both of them. But he could stop it…

"That bad?" Al asked softly.

Sam opened his eyes with a start and looked up to see the deep concern in Al's face.

"Worse," he rasped.

His friend said nothing, waiting. Sam opened his mouth to explain and found that he couldn't bring himself to put into words what happened on that leap and what it meant.

"Alison knew me, Al," was all he said. "She recognized me."

The anger and pain in the girl's face when she looked at him, everything she'd said, all of it was vivid in his mind. He thought she'd mistaken him for someone else, or was simply resentful that he'd interfered; now he realized there was so much more to it.

Al seated himself on the edge of the desk.

"That's not surprising. Donna showed her pictures of you and talked about you. She wanted Alison to know her father and what he was like, for the day he came home. Even if she didn't remember the photos entirely she probably recognized that white streak in your hair and put two and two together. How old was she when you met her?"

"It was July 2012. Twelve. God, she was only twelve…" Sam gazed at the picture. "No wonder she looked so familiar…"

Donna. She'd reminded him of Donna; and yet the memory of his wife had stubbornly remained out of his reach. He still couldn't understand it.

And he had a daughter…two daughters…

"Oh God…does Donna know what happened? That Sammie Jo is my daughter…?"

"She's one of the key people on the project. It was pretty impossible to keep it from her."

"Ziggy could have…"

"No, that leap had nothing to do with her. Ziggy had no reason to restrict her access to information about it other than to spare her feelings and Ziggy never cared about that. Donna understood that leaping required you to do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do, and that in the long run it was for the greater good. You're really two of a kind, you and Donna. Both of you putting everyone else in the world over your own happiness."

Sam was quiet, staring again at the two lovely faces looking back at him from the snapshot. His own family.

"You keep that photo with you, Sam. I want you to have it."

He smiled at Al. "Alison mentioned you. Her Uncle Al."

"Well, you are family," he said with a shrug, easing himself off the desk. He replaced the top on the shoebox, slipped the rubber band around it and went to return it to the closet shelf. "You and Donna and Alison. Remember, you're Uncle Sam and Aunt Donna to my girls too."

Sam rose and took out his wallet, slipping the photo into one of the see-through plastic compartments. He grazed his finger over the picture, lovingly tracing the contours of his wife's face then letting his fingertip settle under his little girl's chin. After a while he closed the wallet and put it in his pocket. Al came up to stand beside him again, looking morose, and Sam rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry. Everything will be okay."

"Always the optimist," Al sulked. "This is a mess and you know it."

"Yeah, I know it."

"I knew it too. It was reckless…but…I was running out of options…" He agitatedly scrubbed a hand over his face and groaned. "Oh God, Beth…"

Sam sighed and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "I know, Al. But I'm still leaping. I'll figure this all out. It'll be okay."

"Well, if you ever decide to take a break from leaping Sammie Jo is raring to go and fill your shoes. You should've seen the disappointment on her face when we decided she needed to stay and work the retrieval instead of me. So you can, you know…"

"Pass the torch?" Sam said wryly.

"Sure, why not? What are you, fifty now? You're not a spring chicken anymore, you know."

"Gee, _thanks_."

"The point is unless you've attained immortality since I last saw you, you won't go on forever. Who will do this after you're gone?"

"God, Al, I've really missed you."

His friend just looked at him. "That's a funny thing to say when you're about to leave."

Sam smiled ruefully. Al did always sense when it was time for him to leap, almost in the same moment Sam knew it. He pulled Al into a bear hug, savoring the feeling of being able to touch him, more calmly now, and of the arms coming around in return to hold him, breathing in the heavier smell of smoke that had seeped into Al's hair and leap suit. He never imagined he could miss the smell of cigars so much.

"Would you do me a favor?" Sam asked after they released one another.

"Name it."

"Promise me you won't leap after me."

Al grimaced.

"Please, Al. I'm not lost so you don't need to find me. I'll find you. All of you." He held out his hand. "I promise."

"Okay, Sam," he said finally, reaching out and grasping his outstretched hand. They shook on it. "I won't leap after you. I promise. And I promise I'll take the damn Fermi suit off."


End file.
